[Mr. Brann was billed to lecture at Hillsboro, Texas,
on the eve of the local option election. The Antis took
possession of the opera house and changed his subject.
Following is a synopsis of his address.]
Ladies and Gentlemen: I came here to talk on "Gall,"
and I find that I must speak on "Prohibition"--a
distinction without a difference. I hold in my hand a printed
challenge from the Prohib committee to meet Hon. W. K.
Homan in joint debate to-night--a challenge issued when
they were well aware that I was to lecture here this
evening. They felt certain that I would not forego a lecture
fee to mix it with them without money and without price;
but they didn't know their man. I'm always willing to
make some sacrifice to secure the luxury of a red-hot
intellectual scrapping match. We proposed to make it a
Midshipman Easy duel, a three-cornered fight--Brothers
Homan and Benson vs. the "Apostle," but they wiggled in
and they wiggled out, they temporized and tergiversated
until we saw there wasn't an ounce of fight in the whole
Prohibition crew--that, after their flamboyant defi, we
couldn't pull 'em into a joint debate with a span of mules
and a log-cabin. I last saw Bro. Bill Homan at Hubbard
City. He was getting out of town on the train I got in on
--after promising that he would remain over and meet me.
In his harangue the night before he told his auditors that
I'd simply "abuse the church and make ugly faces."
Well, I didn't abuse the church on that occasion, nor upon
any other, albeit I sometimes make it a trifle uncomfortable
for some of its unworthy representatives. I cannot
help "making ugly faces." It's my misfortune, not
my fault. I was born good and Bro. Bill was born beautiful.
He's the Adonis of the rostrum, the Apollo Belvidere
of the bema. He's so dodgasted "purty" that the children
cry for him. Had he come to earth two thousand years
ago some Grecian goddess would have stolen him. Bro.
Bill couldn't make an ugly face if he tried. If he ever
catches sight of his own personal pulchritude as reflected
in some translucent lake, I much fear that he'll meet with
the fate of Narcissus. Some of you Prohibs don't know
who Narcissus was. Well, he was one of those fellows
whom cold water killed.
I'm no professional anti-Prohibition spouter, and have
been jumped up here without preparation; but it occurs
to me that it requires no careful rehearsal of set orations
before an amorous looking glass, no studied intermingling
of pathos, bathos and blue fire to demolish the Prohibition
fallacy. Liberty is ever won by volunteers; the shackles
of political and religious slavery are forged by the hands
of hirelings. Prohibition cannot withstand the light of
logic, the lessons of experience, nor the crucible of the
commonest kind of common sense.
Milton tells us that the angel Ithuriel found the devil
"squat like a toad," distilling poison in the ear of sleeping
Eve; that he touched the varmint with his spear, and
forthwith Satan resumed his proper shape and fled shrieking
out of Paradise. Prohibition is another evil spirit that
is breeding trouble in man's Eden; but when touched by
the spear-point of legitimate criticism its disguise falls
away, and we see, instead of a harmless toad, a malicious
Meddlesome Mattie stirring up strife and bitterness among
brethren.
Whenever a man opposes the plans of the Prohibs he is
forthwith denounced as an enemy of morality, a slave of
the saloons, a hireling of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing
Association. Well, I had rather be the emissary of the
saloons than the assassin of liberty, the slave of a brewer
than the blind peon of ignorant prejudice, while if morality
consists in attending to my neighbor's business to the neglect
of my own, then I'm ferninst it, first, last and all the
time. As a good German friend of mine once remarked:
"Dot beoples who lives py stones of mine shouldn't trow
some glass houses, haind id?" Who is making money out
of this agitation? The Professional Prohibs. Did you
ever know of one of these gentry making a Prohibition
speech except for filthy lucre--unless he was electioneering
for office or taking subscribers for a cold-water
journal? They are the cattle who are OUT FOR THE STUFF;
they are the mercenaries--the men who pump foul air
through their faces for a fee. Did you ever hear of a
man getting paid for defending the doctrine of personal
liberty? Did you ever see a collection taken up at an
anti-prohibition meeting to pay some important spouter
for pointing out to the people their political duty? (A
voice: "Nix.") And you never will. These prohibition
orators have the impudence to denounce me as "the peon
of the rum power" while I am fighting the battles of
personal liberty at my own cost, yet not a dad-burned one of
'em will open his head unless paid for his wind-power!
They are "reformers" for revenue only.
I have noticed that, as a rule, men who speak against
Prohibition have never been in the gutter, while those who
pick up a precarious livelihood by chasing the "Rum Demon"
around a stump have usually been his very humble
slaves. I have noticed that the men who oppose Prohibition
are usually the solid, well-to-do men of the community,
the heavy tax-payers the men upon whom the schools, the
churches and the state chiefly depend for support, while
those who champion it on the rostrum are usually living
in some way upon the industry of others. The man who
has brains enough to make money and keep it usually has
too much sense to be a Prohibitionist. It is the fellows
who have made a failure of life; who live on donations;
who weep over the world's wickedness, then take up a
collection to enable them to get to the next town; who haven't
sufficient moral stamina to stay sober, that are prating of
Prohibition. If we required a property franchise you
couldn't muster five thousand Prohibition votes between
the Sabine and the Rio Grande.
And yet we are told that licensing the saloons is a bad
business investment; that it costs more than it comes to;
that the way to abolish poverty is to abrogate the liquor
license law. Strange that the Prohibs should possess such
transcendent business heads and such empty stomachs!
Doubtless the drinking of liquor adds to the cost of our
judiciary; doubtless it is responsible for some crime; but
the question at issue is not one of liquor-drinking vs.
teetotalism--it is a question of drinking licensed liquor
or Prohibition aquafortis. It is not a question of reducing
the cost of our courts, but of making liquor bear its due
proportion of the burdens it foists upon the people.
I am neither the friend nor enemy of liquor, any more
than I am the enemy or friend of buttermilk. I have drunk
both a third of a century and have been unable to see that
they did me any especial good or harm. I was never
befuddled on the one nor foundered on the other, and have
managed to get along very well with both. Whether in
eating or drinking, a man should keep his brains above
his belt, and if he cannot do that he's a precious poor
excuse for an uncrowned King, an American Sovereign.
The statistics furnished by the Prohibition orators are
fearfully and wonderfully made. It has been asserted in
this campaign that a million Americans die every year
of the world from the effects of strong drink--and all this
great army goes direct to hell. The man who made that
statement is a preacher, and presumably familiar with the
Bible; but he has evidently overlooked the story of
Ananias and Saphira. I learn from the United States census
report, which I hold in my hand, that in the very year in
which this Prohibition apostle claims a million Americans
were slain by strong drink, the statistical experts could
find but 1,592 victims of John Barleycorn. The doctors
have ever claimed that more people die of over-eating than
of over-drinking, and the census report bears out the
assertion, for in the year in which 1,592 people were filed
away by "alcoholism," 30,094 deaths are accredited to
"diseases of the digestive organs." What causes indigestion?
Over-eating, or eating food difficult of digestion.
Now I submit that if Brothers Benson, Homan, et al, are
trying to save the people of this land from premature
graves and bear the stock of the coffin trust, they should
direct their crusade against indigestible food,--reduce the
people of this Nation by means of statutory law to a diet
of cornbread and buttermilk. Let them bring all their
ballistae and battering-rams to bear upon the toothsome
mince pie, the railway sandwich, the hard-boiled egg and
pickled pigs' feet--that pestilence that walks in darkness.
Indigestion is indeed a fruitful source of crime. It casts
the black shadow of chronic pessimism athwart the sunniest
soul and transforms happy homes into dens of despair.
It makes men irritable, morose, and prompts them to
homicide. Who can tell how much misery and crime the
wretched cookery of female Prohibitionists is responsible
for? How the cost of our criminal courts might be reduced
if these she-reformers would but attend to their
kitchens and dish up for their lords and masters grub
that would more easily assimilate with the gastric juices!
If a man be fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils when
loaded with a half a pint of red licker, what must be the
condition of his mind and morals when he's full of sodden
pie, half baked beans and soda-biscuits that if fired from
a cannon would kill a bull?
The theory that strong drink is an unmixed evil that
must be abolished, is not in accord with the genius of this
government, which would give to the individual untrammeled
liberty in matters concerning only himself. Experience
has proven Prohibition a rank failure and the
customs of mankind from the very dawn of history brand
it a rotten fraud. The people of every age and clime
have used stimulants, and we may safely conclude that,
despite the Prohibs, they will be employed so long as man
exists upon the earth. Banish liquor and man will find a
substitute even though it be opium, morphine or cocaine.
It is said that Thor, the great northern god of war, once
tried to lift what he supposed was an old woman, but
found to his sorrow that it was a mighty serpent which,
in Norse mythology, encircles the world. The Prohibs
are warring upon what they foolishly imagine to be
frivolous habit of man, but will yet learn that they are
running counter to an immutable decree of God--are
trying to alter the physical constitution of the human race
by means of local option elections.
So far as I am personally concerned, I would care but
little if every ounce of liquor was banished from the earth
and its method of manufacture forever be forgotten; but I
object to having a lot of he-virgins and female wall-flowers
sit at my muzzle and dictate how I shall load myself. If
I'm an American sovereign I propose to be supreme autocrat
of my own stomach. When I want advice regarding
what I shall eat and what I shall drink I'll consult a
doctor of medicine instead of a doctor of divinity.
I do not oppose Prohibition because I am the friend
of liquor, but because I am the friend of liberty. I would
rather see a few boozers than a race of bondmen. I am
not interested in preserving the liquor traffic, but I am
interested in the perpetuation of those principles that
ennoble a people and make manly men--men who rely upon
themselves for their social salvation rather than upon a
public policy which may change with the phases of the
moon or the arrival of some new demagogue from distant
parts. I have but little use for men who must swing to the
apron-strings of a public grand-dame or go to the dogs.
Let us reserve the nursery for children. Men whom we
cannot trust with the guardianship of their own appetites
should not be allowed to run at large. How would you
young ladies like to marry "American Sovereigns" who
must be tied up, like a lot of mangy cayuses when white
clover is in blossom to keep 'em from catching the
"slobbers"?
But, the Prohibs inform us, the brightest men of the
world are ruined by strong drink. They assure us that
"it is not a question of intellect, but of appetite." What
was judgment given us for if not to control our appetites?
If Appetite be paramount to judgment why do we hang
rape-fiends? Let me tell you the idea that the brainiest
men of the world die drunkards is the merest moonshine.
If only men of genius drank liquor a one-horse still would
supply the demand and be idle six months in the year.
Take the thousand greatest men the world has produced
--the Thousand Immortelles--and not 2 per cent. of them
died drunkards, yet 98 per cent. of them drank liquor. If
the Prohibs have ever produced an intellect of the first
class they must have hidden it under a bushel. Its
possessor is probably one of those village Hampdens or mute
inglorious Miltons of whom the poet sings. The Prohibs
don't run to great men--they run to gab.
Stripped of all its superfluous trappings, the thesis of
Prohibition is simply this: "Some men drink to excess;
therefore no one should be permitted to drink at all. The
human race must reserve its inherent tastes and time-honored
habits lest some wild-eyed jay get on a jag." The
question at issue, the riddle for us to unravel, is simply
this: Can we afford to sacrifice human liberty to save the
sots? Is the game worth the candle, and if we burn the
candle will we win the game?
The Pros assure you that Prohibition prohibits. It
does. It prohibits the sale of liquor and supplies its place
with coffin paint. It prohibits the sale of good, ice cold
beer and gives us forty-rod bugjuice. Theories are
not worth a continental when slammed up against conditions.
What I hear I take with a grain of salt; but what
I see that I do know. I tell you candidly that next to a
pretty woman I love a cocktail. If the liquor is good and
the barkeeper understands his business, I consider it a
thing to thank God for--occasionally. Like religion, a
little of it is an excellent thing, but an overdose will put
wheels in your head. I have never yet been in a Prohibition
precinct where I needed to go thirsty if I had the
price of a pint flask concealed about my person--and my
stomach could stand the poison.
When high license prevailed in Hillsboro you had a
dozen saloons, each contributing to the revenues of the
state, the country, the municipality and the school fund.
You voted local option in, and now you've thirty-two
unlicensed and unregulated doggeries selling rot-gut to
schoolboys and contributing not one cent to the public
revenues. The cost of your courts has increased,
drunkenness was never so common, brawls never so frequent.
It is said that even fools can learn in the bitter school of
experience; but there be idiots upon whom even such lessons
are lost. But you say, "Vote local option in again
and we'll elect officers who will enforce the laws." Have
you yet to learn that a law cannot be enforced that is not
steadily upheld by public opinion? And do you not know
that there's not a considerable town in Texas where public
opinion demands at all times a strict enforcement of such
a law? If you really desire to have a sober city, raise
a purse and hire the operators of your blind tigers to place
their booze on the sidewalk in buckets, accompanied by
tin dippers and signs, "Help yourself--funerals furnished
free." Men would then run away from the very smell of
the stuff who now sneak up dirty alleys and pay 15 cents
for the privilege of poisoning themselves. On the same
principle some men--and they are not all anti-Prohibs
either--will leave a beautiful and charming wife to mope
at home while they are flirting with some female whose
face would frighten a freight-train. Man is just like a
dog--only more so. Perhaps a marauding old muley cow
would be a better comparison. A muley cow will eat
anything on this majestic earth that she can steal, from a
hickory shirt to a Prohibition newspaper, and if she can't
get it through her neck she will chew it and suck the juice.
That's human nature to a hair. Man values most what is
hardest to get. And until you reverse the law of nature
the legitimate effect of Prohibition will be blind tigers and
back-door sneaks, the breeding of spies and the sale and
consumption of an infinitely meaner brand of booze.
That liquor has done a vast amount of damage I freely
concede; but shall we banish everything that has added to
the mighty tide of human ills? Then what have we left?
A hole in the atmosphere, God has not bequeathed to man
an unmixed blessing since he expelled him from Paradise.
Even woman, his last, best gift, hath grievous faults. The
very first one brought into this world, according to Pagan
legend and Holy Writ, was the author of all our ills. But
for her we would be to-day in a blessed state of innocence,
where mothers-in-law and millinery bills, political issues
and itinerant preachers, mental freaks and professional
reformers, jim-jams and jag cure joints disturb us not.
Instead of all this toil and trouble we would lie like gods
reclining on banks of asphodel, pull the heavenly bell-cord
when hungry and live on from age to age, ever young
Apollos. Perhaps the Almighty made a mistake when he
gave to man a wife, and another when he gave him the
vine; but when he corrects 'em I'll crawl off the earth.
Woman has filled the world with war's alarms, and the
bacchic revel has ended in the brawl. Troy flamed because
Menelaus' wife was false, and Philip's all-conquering
son surrendered to the brimming bowl. Ever is our dearest
joy wedded to our direst woe. The same air that comes
stealing round our pillow, laden with the sensuous perfume
of a thousand flowers, rips our towns to pieces and
turns our artesian wells inside out. The same rains that
fructify the earth pour the destructive flood. The same
intellectual power that bends nature's mighty forces to
man's imperial will, enables him to trample upon his
brethren. The same reckless courage that breaks the
tyrant's chain ofttimes stains the hand with a brother's
blood. The same longing for woman's sweet companionship
that leads these to rear happy homes--sacred shrines
from which incense mounts night and day to the throne
of Omnipotent God--goads those to lawless love. The
empurpled juice that warms the cold heart and stirs the
sluggish blood that gives to the orator lips of gold, to the
poet promethean fire abused doth breed the hasty quarrel
and make the god a beast.
It was said of old that a middle course is safest and
best, and the axiom still holds good. All the Utopias thus
far inaugurated were greased at the wrong end. The
fact that since the dawn of history--aye, so far back that
legend itself is lost in the shadows of the centuries--the
winecup has circulated about the social board, proves that
it supplies a definite, an inherent human want--that it fills
a niche in the world's economy. One of the first acts of
a people after passing the pale of savagery is to supply
itself with stimulants. Why this is so, I do not pretend
to know; but so it is, and it argues that the Prohibition
apostles have tackled about as big a contract as did Dame
Partington--that they had best "pluck a few feathers
from the wing of their fancy wherewith to supply the tail
of their judgment."
The Prohibs declare that 999 out of every 1,000 crimes
are caused by liquor. Suppose this to be true: Does it
take the cussedness out of liquor to drive it from the front
room into the back alley? Is it not a fact that the worst
brand of "fighting booze" is dispensed at the illicit
doggery? But the Prohibs are as badly at sea anent their
criminal statistics as in the mortuary report. Comparatively
few of the great criminals of this country ever
drank liquor to excess. But a small per cent. of those in
our penitentiaries were confirmed drunkards when accorded
the hospitality of the state. When a man is convicted
of crime he naturally seeks a scapegoat. Adam
threw all the blame of that apple episode on Eve, simply
because liquor had not then been invented and he could
not plead an Edenic jag in extenuation. I was once interviewing
a man who had just been sentenced to the penitentiary
for horse-theft. I thought that perhaps a cocktail
would cause him to talk freer, and had one smuggled
to his cell. He declined it, saying that he had never taken
but one drink of liquor in his life, and that made him sick.
"But," said I, "you told the court that you were crazy
drunk when you committed the crime."
"Yes," he replied, "I'd rather be thought a drunkard
than a natural born d----d thief."
That led me to investigate. I interviewed the recorder
of Galveston, the chief of police, the sheriff of the county,
the district attorney and several other officials. We went
over the records, and the habits of each offender were
carefully inquired into. As a matter of course the
"drunks and disorderlies" made an imposing list; but we
were unable to trace the influence of liquor in more than
3 per cent. of the serious crimes committed in Galveston
city and county during five years.
The great cry of the Prohibs is, "Save the boys; remove
temptation from their path." Well, that's all right,
if you've got a putty boy; but if I had a boy who wanted
to go on a whizz and wasn't smart enough to find the
means despite all the Prohibs in Christendom, I'd send
him to the insane asylum. I was reading the other day of
some college youths who were watched so closely that
they couldn't obtain liquor, and proceeded to fill up on
illuminating gas. If the supply of gas holds out those
youngsters are likely to develop into great Prohibition
orators. If you want to keep your boy from filling a
drunkard's grave, begin by getting a sure-enough boy--
one whose brain-pan lies above instead of below his ears.
Then raise him right. Don't tell him that every man who
sells liquor is an emissary of hell, and that every man who
drinks it is a worthless sot. If you do, he'll soon find out
that you are a liar without sufficient intelligence to build
a dangerous falsehood, and he'll take off the muzzle. Tell
him the truth and thereby retain his confidence. Tell him
that liquor is a pretty good thing to let alone, but that
millions of better men than his daddy have drank it and
lived and died sober and useful citizens.
Prohibition was first tried in the Garden of Eden. It
proved a failure there, and it has proven a failure ever
since. It is not in accord with the Christian Bible, the
fundamental law of the land or the lessons of history.
Wine has been used in almost every religious rite except
Mohammedanism and devil worship. St. Paul recommends
it, Christ made and used it and God saved Noah
while letting all the good Prohibitionists drown. The
Saviour came eating and drinking. Abraham Lincoln
declared Prohibition "a species of intemperance within
itself" and "a blow at the very principles on which our
government was founded." General Grant, Thomas
Jefferson, Horatio Seymour and John Quincy Adams
denounced it in unmeasured terms. Who's taking issue with
these giants of the intellect? Redlicker Benson of Ingeanny,
who has come all the way to Texas to tell us barbarians
what to do to be saved--and incidentally pick up
enough money to pay for another "jag"; Whoopee
Kalamity Homan, the pretty man of Dallas, whose chief
argument is that I abuse the churches--which is an
infernal falsehood; and Jehovah Boanerges Cranfill, an
ex-bum who aspires to the presidency of the United States,
but couldn't be elected pound-master in his own precinct.
I have been asked why, if as much liquor is sold under
Prohibition as under high license, the saloonists insist
upon contributing to the public revenues. The answer's
dead easy. The men who engineer blind tigers vote the
Prohibition ticket. They contribute to the campaign
fund. They help pay the fees of the cold water spouters
and sputers. More liquor is sold under local option than
under high license, because of man's natural hankering for
forbidden fruits; but it is sold by a different class of men
and is a different kind of booze. It is sold by chronic law-
breakers, by men who have little to lose, by toughs for
whom the bat-cage hath no terrors. The man who is capable of
straddling an unlicensed keg of bug-juice in a back-room and
ladling out liquid hell to little boys, is quite naturally in
favor of Prohibition. A man of respectability, and who is
financially responsible for offenses, desires to keep within the
limits of the law. That's the reason that respectable saloon men
are the enemies of Prohibition.
Legalize the sale of liquor and you will have some
crime, no doubt. You will have paupers and criminals to
provide for, but you'll have a revenue to help bear the
burdens. Prohibit it and you'll have the burdens without
the revenue. Permit its sale and you will have law-abiding
citizens engaged in the traffic, men who will try to
make it decent, who will take a pride in the purity of their
wares and the orderliness of their places; prohibit it, and
you will have a lot of law-breakers on the one hand selling
slumgullion made of cheap chemicals and general cussedness,
and a gang of spies and informers on the other stirring
up strife and entailing costly litigation.
When driven to the wall; when it is clearly demonstrated
that their doctrine does not accord with the genius
of this government; when it is amply proven that wherever
tried it has proven an expensive failure, an arrant
fraud, the Prohibs fall back upon the Bible. You may
prove five hundred different religious dogmas by the Bible,
but Prohibition is not one of them. Bro. Homan declares
that the Old Testament prohibits the drinking of wine.
It does not; but it does not make circumcision obligatory,
and a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission. If
Bro. Homan proposes to be guided by the Old Testament I
beg to suggest that he is overlooking a very important bit.
The Old Testament commands no class of people to
abstain from wine, except the Jewish priesthood, and
they ONLY WHILE PERFORMING THEIR SACRED OFFICES. An angel
of the Lord did command the barren Manoah to stay sober
awhile and she should conceive and bear a son; and I
imagine that something equally as miraculous might happen
to Luther Benson under similar circumstances.
David recounts as one of God's mercies that he giveth
water to the wild ass and wine to make glad the heart of
man. Solomon sings to the wine cup with all the ardor
of Anacreon, while the prophets kept the morals of Israel
toned up by threats that a lapse from virtue would prove
disastrous to the vineyards. St. Paul advised bishops and
old women to take but little wine. He also suggested to
the first that they should not fly into a passion, and to the
latter that spreading false reports about their neighbors
was not considered good form. The Prohibs, as a last
resort, insist that the wine of Biblical days was very
different from our own--a kind of circus lemonade; but it
seems to have gotten in its graft on old Noah in most
elegant shape. If the wine of Biblical times was so harmless
why did the sacred writers consider it necessary to caution
people against drunkenness, bid them be temperate in all
things--while avoiding teetotalism? The only beverage
I can find mentioned in the Bible that affected a man like a
Prohibition drink, was that given Col. Lot in the cave by
his two daughters. It accomplished what medical men
assure me was a miracle--and the Prohibs run largely to
the miraculous.
* * *
OLD GLORY.
(Address at San Antonio, July 4, 1893.)
FELLOW CITIZENS--I have done pretty much everything
that a man may do and dodge the penitentiary, except run
for office and make Fourth of July speeches. Eulogizing
the Goddess of Liberty were much like adding splendor to
the sunrise or fragrance to the breath of morn. She needs
no encomiast, star-crowned she stands, the glory of
America, the admiration of the world.
I shall make a bid for your gratitude by being brief. In
July weather the song of an electric fan and the small voice
of the soda fount were more grateful to the soul than the
grandest eloquence that ever burned on a Grady's lips of
gold. It is customary, I believe on July 4th, to "make the
eagle scream,"--to fight o'er again all the gory battles of
the Republic, from Lexington's defeat to the glorious victory
of the last election; but I am no Gov. Waite, and
blood to horses' bridles delights me not. I would rather
at any time talk of love's encounters than of war's alarums
--rather bask in the smiles of beauty than mount barbed
steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries. I have
ever had a sneaking respect for Grover Cleveland for
sending a substitute to remonstrate with the Southern
Confederacy while he played progressive euchre with the
pretty girls. His patriotism may not have soared above
par, but there were no picnic ants on his judgment. Much
as I love my country, I would rather be a living president
than a dead hero.
I address you as "fellow Americans," for in this land
no man of Celtic or of Saxon blood can be an alien.
Whether he was born on the banks of the blue Danube or
by Killarney's lovely lakes, 'mid Scotia's rugged hills or
on the sunny vales of France, he is bound to us with ties
of blood; he hath a claim upon our country, countersigned
by those brave souls who, in the western wilds, gave to
Liberty a habitation and a name--who declared that
Columbia should ever be the refuge of the world's
oppressed,--that all men, in whatever country born, should
be equal before the law wherever falls the shadow of our
flag. There has of late arisen a strange new doctrine that
we should close our ports against the peoples of other
lands, however worthy they may be; but I say unto you
that such a policy were to betray a sacred trust confided
to us by our fathers,--that every honest man beneath
high heaven, every worshipper at Liberty's dear shrine
hath an inheritance here, and when, with uplifted hand he
pledges his life, his fortune and his sacred honor to the
defense of freedom's flag he becomes as much an American
as though to the manner born.
On occasions such as this we of America are apt to
glorify ourselves too much,--to overlook the origin of
those elements that made us great. When exulting over
our victories in war and our still more glorious triumphs
in peace, our progress and our prosperity, we should not
forget that had there been no Europe there would be no
great American nation; that all the courage that beats
in the blood of Columbia's imperial sons, and all the
wondrous beauty with which her daughters are dowered;
that all the tireless energy of which she proudly boasts,
and all the genius that gilds her name with glory were
nurtured for a thousand years at white bosoms beyond the
ocean's brine.
The American nation is the fair flower of European
civilization, the petted child of the world's old age.
Princes may be jealous of her progress and tyrants read
in her rise their own downfall; but the great heart of the
people of every land and clime is hers; to her they turn
their faces as the helianthus to the rising sun,--she is
their beacon light, their star of hope, guiding them to the
glories of a grander day.
It is natural, it is right that on the nation's natal day
we should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we
enjoy--should pay the tribute of our respect to those
whose courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us
masters of our fate; but we should not, as too often
happens, make it the occasion for senseless bravado and
foolish bluster. We should rather employ it to promote
good will among the nations of the earth, to link together
in a kindlier brotherhood the various families of the great
Caucasian race, to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful
plowshares and forever banish strife.
I sometimes dream that God has, in his mercy, raised
this nation up unto the world's salvation,--the immediate
instrument of His grace to usher in that age of gold,
"When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are
furled,
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."
I delight to trace in the rise and fall of nations the finger
of God, and strive to read the Almighty's plan in the
historic page. In the farthest east appeared the first
faint light of civilization's dawn, and westward ever since
the star of empire hath ta'en its way, while each succeeding
nation that rose in its luminous paths like flowers in
the footsteps of our dear Lord, has reached a higher plane
and wrought out a grander destiny. The cycle is complete--
the star now blazes in the world's extreme west
and by the law of progress which has preserved for forty
centuries, here if anywhere, must we look for that millennial
dawn of which poets have fondly dreamed and for
which philanthropists have prayed.
The awful responsibility of leadership rests upon us.
We have shattered the scepter of the tyrant and broken
the shackles of the slave; we have torn the diadem from the
prince's brow and placed the fasces of authority in the
hands of the people; we have undertaken to lead the human
race from the Slough of Despond to the Delectable Mountains,
where Justice reigns supreme and every son of
Adam may find life worth living. Can we make good our
glorious promises? Are we equal to the task to which we
have given our hand? Ten thousand times the world has
asked this question, but there is neither Dodona Oak nor
Delphic Oracle to make reply--the future alone can
answer. All eyes are upon us, in hope or fear, in prayer
or protest. The fierce light that beats upon a throne were
as the firefly's dull flame to the lightning's flash compared
with that which illumes the every act of this champion of
human progress, this knight par excellence, this Moses
of the nations.
It is an important role which God hath assigned to us
in the great drama of life, yet into a part so pregnant
with fate we too often inject the levity of the farce.
While preaching equal rights to all and special privileges
to none, we pass laws that divide the people of this land
into princes and paupers, into masters and slaves. On
July 4th we shout for the old flag, and all the rest of the
year we clamor for an appropriation. While boasting
that we are sovereigns by right divine and equal unto
kings, we hasten to lay our hair beneath the feet of every
scorbutic dude who hither drifts,
"Stuck o'er with titles and hung around with strings."
The soldier who serves the state demands a pension, and
every burning patriot wants an office. We boast that the
people rule, and office-holders are but public servants; yet
more than a moiety of us would hang our crowns on a
hickory limb and swim a river to break into official bondage.
Here in Texas seven distinguished citizens are already
chasing the governorship like a pack of hungry
wolves after a wounded fawn, while the woods are full of
brunette equines who have taken for their motto,
"They also serve who only stand and wait."
Yes, our office-holders are indeed our public servants--
and my experience with servants has been that they usually
run the whole shebang.
Theoretically we have the best government on the globe,
but it is so brutally mismanaged by our blessed public
servants that it produces the same evil conditions that
have damned the worst. Even Americans whose forefathers
dined on faith at Valley Forge, or fought at
Lundy's Lane, have become so discouraged by political
bossism, so heartsick with hope deferred that they quote
approvingly those lines of Pope,
"For forms government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best."
While boasting of popular government, we suffer
ourselves to be led about by self-seeking politicians like a
blind man by a scurvy poodle; we made partisanship
paramount to patriotism--have reserved the poet's line,
and now
"All are for a party and none are for the state."
It were well for us to make July 4th less an occasion
for self-glorification than for prayerful consideration of
the dangers upon which we are drifting in these piping
times of peace--dangers that arise, not in foreign courts
and camps, but are conceived in sin by the American
plutocracy and brought forth in iniquity by our own political
bosses. We have no longer aught to fear from the outside
world. Uncle Sam can, if need be, marshal forth to
battle eight million as intrepid sons as those who crowned
old Bunker Hill with flame or bathed the crests of
Gettysburg with blood. Upon such a wall of oak and iron
the powers of the majestic world would beat in vain. Our
altars and our fanes are far beyond the reach of a foreign
foe; but the rock that recks not the thunderbolt nor bows
to the fierce simoon, is swept from its base by the
unconsidered brook.
No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach; no
country can be secure, I care not if Moses makes its
constitution and Solon frame its laws, when half its people
are homeless and brawny giants must beg their bread. As
far back as history's dawn the rise of the plutocracy and
the impoverishment of the common people have heralded
the downfall of the state. Thus fell imperial Rome, that
once did rule the world, and Need and Greed are the
ballistae and battering-rams that are pounding to-day with
tremendous power upon every throne of Europe and rocking
the very civilization of the world from turret to
foundation stone.
We have achieved liberty, but have yet to learn in this
strange new land the true significance of life. We have
made the dollar the god of our idolatry, the Alpha and
Omega of our existence, and bow the knee to it with a
servility as abject as that of courtiers kissing the hand of
Kings. As the old pagans sometimes incorporated their
lesser in their greater deities that they might worship all
at once, so have we put the Goddess of Liberty and Saving
Grace on the silver dollar that we may not forget them.
But before God, I do believe that this selfish, this
Mammon-serving and unpatriotic age will pass, as passed the
age of brutish ignorance, as passed the age of tyranny. I
believe the day will come--oh blessed dawn!--when we'll
no longer place the badge of party servitude above the
crown of American sovereignty, the ridiculous oriflamme
of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise
of everlasting unity; when Americans will be in spirit and
in truth a band of brothers, the wrongs of one the
concern of all; when brains and patriotism will take
precedence of boodle and partisanship in our national politics;
when labor will no longer fear the cormorant nor capital
the commune; when every worthy and industrious citizen
may spend his declining days, not in some charity ward,
but in the grateful shadow of his own vine and fig-tree,
the loving lord of a little world hemmed in by the sacred
circle of a home. There was a time, we're told, when to be
a Roman was greater than to be a King; yet there came
a time when to be a Roman was to be the vassal of a slave.
Change is the order of the universe and nothing stands.
We must go forward or we must go backward--we must
press on to grander heights, to greater glories, or see the
laurels already won turn to ashes on our brow. We may
sometimes slip; shadows may obscure our path; the boulders
may bruise our feet; there may be months of mourning
and days of agony; but however dark the night, Hope,
a poising eagle, will ever burn above the unrisen morrow.
Trials we may have and tribulations sore; but I say unto
you, oh brothers mine, that while God reigns and the
human race endures, this nation, born of our father's blood
and sanctified by our mother's tears, shall never pass away.
* * *
THE LONE STAR.
These balmy days, I often recall my ideas of Texas before
I had the pleasure of mingling with its people,--of becoming
myself a Texan. I regret to say that I had accepted
Phil Sheridan's estimate of the State--an opinion that
still prevails in too many portions of our common country.
After living in Texas for ten years I paid a visit to my
people beyond the beautiful Ohio. The old gentlemen sized
me up critically, evidently expecting to see me wearing
war-paint and a brace of bowie-knives.
"So, young man, you're living in Texas?"
"Yes, paw."
"Fell kinder t'hum 'mong them centerpedes, cowboys 'n
other varments, I s'pose?"
"Y-y-yes, paw."
"Well, Billy, you allers was a mighty bad boy. I kinder
cackalated as how you'd go t'hell some day; but, praise
God, I never thought y' was bound fer Texas!"
I assured him that were I certain hell were half as good
as Texas, I wouldn't worry so much about my friends who
were in politics for their health.
Texas could well afford to spend a million dollars a
year for a decade to disabuse the minds of the Northern
people--to work it through their hair that the southwest
produces something besides hades and hoodlums, jack-
rabbits and jays. Were it generally known exactly what
Texas is,--what her people, climate and resources--there
are not railroads enough running into the state to handle
the men and money that would seek homes and investments
here. The year 1900 would see ten million prosperous
people between the Sabine and Rio Grande; and it would
be a people to be proud of,--the young blood of America,
the cream of Christendom, the brain and brawn of the
Western World.
The light of the Lone Star cannot be much longer
hidden; it is breaking even now upon the earth. True
knowledge of Texas is spreading,--spreading over the icy
North, spreading over the barren East, spreading over
crowded Europe--and knowledge of Texas is power unto
her salvation.
I was north last summer, and talked Texas, of course.
One day a long, lank, lingering eternity of a gawk sidled
up to me, as though he feared I was loaded, and said:
"Great state, that Texas, I 'spose?"
"Rather."
"Purty big, I heer'n tell?"
"Look at the map."
"Gewhillikins, Maria! 'Tis purty dogon gosh-all-fired
big, haint she?"
"That's whatever."
" 'Spose you're a gineral, or a corporal, or suthin
nuther when you're t'hum?"
"Nop."
"N-no? Jedge, p'haps?"
"No, sir; I am simply a plain, every-day citizen of
Texas,--not even a member of the legislature or candidate
for congress."
"Hump! Say, Maria, I kinder thought as how that
slab-sided galoot was a lyin' when he said he was frum
Texas."
He could not conceive of a Texan without a title. But
Texas will come out all right. I have faith in her future,
for many reasons; but chiefly because she has unbounded
confidence in herself--because nowhere will you find such
local patriotism, such state pride, such love of home as
beneath the Lone Star. There are rivalries, but they are
not born of bitterness. A Texas is all for Texas.
Within the memory of living men, Oppression's fangs
wounded Freedom's snowy breast, and from the ruddy
drops Almighty God did make a star, the brightest that
ever blessed the world; but ever have the clouds of
calumny and the mists of malice obscured its matchless
beauty. Slowly but surely the rank vapors are rolling by,
and brighter and ever brighter blazes our astral emblem
--born in the field of battle, its lullaby the cannon's
thunder, its cradle the hearts of the brave, its nurse
necessity, its baptismal rite a rain of blood and tears. May it
forever be another beacon of Bethlehem to guide us on to a
grander future--a harbinger of hope and happiness, an
emblem of love and liberty, and in its deathless splendor go
ever shining on.
* * *
SLAVE OR SOVEREIGN.