|HAVING more than consumed the space allotted for this volume, we have
neither room nor time left in which to write of the Roman Republic as
its importance demands, and as indeed we should gladly have written.
And yet we confess there is not, or ought not to be, any necessity for
adding another word. If the lessons taught us from what we have learned
of the three preceding republics have not opened our eyes to the
dangerous tendencies of the Democratic party as a party; if we are not
already convinced that the leaders of that party, and those who stand
behind the scenes to prompt the leaders and furnish them with the
"sinews of war," in the shape of European gold, have for their ultimate
object the setting aside of our representative form of government
and the destruction of the liberty of our press, then we would not be
convinced though one arose from the dead.
Why, then, need we add a word about the founding of the Roman Republic,
five hundred and ten years before Christ; why tell of the law, then
for the first time enacted by the Senate, that any citizen who had been
condemned to death by a magistrate, or even to banishment, or corporal
punishment, should have the right of an appeal to the people before the
sentence went into effect; why tell of the wars in which the republic
was thenceforth engaged, and how gloriously the people sustained the
honor of the republic; why tell how the people were afterwards betrayed
by their rulers, and made to suffer the most intolerable hardships
until they obtained the privilege of electing tribunes; why tell of the
struggles that these tribunes of the people had with rulers chosen by
the aristocracy for many, many years in maintaining for the people the
rights for which they had made immense sacrifice of life, and which
they valued so highly; why tell--as it would take an entire volume to
tell--how corruptions crept, from time to time, into the heart of the
republic, how ambition took the place of patriotism, how the leaders
in the provinces were watching with jealous eyes those at Rome and
vice versa, how Caesar finally "passed the Rubicon," how he seized the
government, how he attempted to put on a crown, and in the attempt lost
both the crown and his life; and how, when great Caesar fell, fell
the republic, with a crash that was heard to the uttermost ends of the
earth? If we were to tell all this with the precision of a Montesquieu,
or with as much display of learning as an Abbé de Vertot, there could
only be gathered therefrom precisely the same lessons as we have already
learned from the rise, progress, decline, and downfall of the three
Grecian republics.
And thus, my friend (the reader), we are finally brought face to face
to the last clause of your third question, as to What is to be the final
end of this republic?
The shortest answer would be, We don't know, and then stop right there;
but this would not be satisfactory to you. The next shortest answer will
be that our republic will, in all human probability, follow the fate of
the Grecian and Roman republics, and that it is only a question of time
when that shall be. We know that such a confession is humiliating to
one's pride, and that we would all much rather believe, as it is usual
for Fourth of July orators to say, that "this republic is to last
forever!" but alas! alas! for human vanity, it is only too true that
"history but repeats itself!"
But, allowing this answer to be the correct one, it by no means lessens
your and my responsibility; for whether that end comes in twenty years,
or two hundred years, or two thousand years, depends altogether upon
Americans themselves. There are good, and true, and intelligent men in
every political party, as there are good, and true, and intelligent men
in every religious organization. While we conscientiously believe that
the tendency of the Democratic party to be just as we have repeatedly
stated; and while we as conscientiously believe that the Roman Catholic
Church, as a church, is being made use of by European sovereigns, just
as we have repeatedly stated; yet we believe, indeed, we know, that both
in that party and in that church are as good men, as true men, and as
intelligent men as are to be found in any party or in any church
on earth; and if these will but unite with the good, and true, and
intelligent of other parties and of other churches, the representative
form of this government, and consequently its liberties, and the liberty
of its press, may be preserved yet for many scores of years, if not for
many centuries. It is no mere figure of speech to say that "the price
of liberty is eternal vigilance" Like panthers crouching and waiting
for their prey, the enemies of this government are all the while on the
watch. They have their paid emissaries not only at Washington, but at
every State capital, just as Philip of Macedon had among the republics
of Greece. A lack of vigilance upon the part of patriots may, at any one
of our national elections, put the general government into their hands.
This once in their hands, they will find a way, or make one, as we have
heretofore said, to hold it for all time to come; for every crowned head
of Europe would at once, openly or secretly, rally to their support.
Then would come a weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, but,
alas, it would be too late! Then would be found Americans in all parts
of the world without a home and without a country, but their regrets,
alas! would bring back neither. There are Greeks and Romans to-day, as
there were Greeks and Romans two thousand and three thousand years ago;
but it blurs the eye to see (as we have seen in their own lands), and
it sickens the heart to think (as any intelligent man may think) of,
the difference between a citizen of Greece and of Rome to-day and of the
citizen who lived when they were republics! Pigmies and giants are the
only two English words we have to express such difference; but to one
who has seen and felt the difference, while travelling through their own
lands, these words fail utterly to convey a true conception of the real
difference which exists.
And now, my good friend (the reader), I must bid you farewell. We have
travelled a long way together--longer, perhaps, than has occurred to you
as we have steadily pursued our course. Starting in our own times,
and with events in some of which we have ourselves taken part, we
have slowly ascended the river of time until we reached a point (the
beginning of the Athenian Republic) nearly three thousand years from
where we started. Then, retracing our way, we slowly descended the
river, stopping long enough to gather a few grains of wheat at one
place, a few grains of rye at another, a few grains of corn at another,
and so on, and on, until we have got back to where we started. In the
beginning of our journey we peeped into some dark places--places into
which the light of history never before had shone, but which, from
this time forth, will be as well known as any other facts of the great
rebellion.
All that I have done for you, in all these journeyings, is, at near the
close of our pilgrimage, to select out the different kinds of grain,
arrange them in form of proposition and proof, just as any other
logician or rhetorician might have done, and then point out to you that,
if we would be profited by these grains (of information), picked up on
the way, and treat them in a certain manner, they would yield wholesome
bread and sustain life (the life of our republic) for many years to
come; whereas, treated in another way, these same grains would only make
the vilest of whiskey, which, used wrongfully, could only lead to misery
and final death here and eternal death hereafter. In some things, my
friend (the reader), your knowledge is far beyond mine; in others,
mine may be greater than yours, because of chances of information which
happened to come in my way instead of coming in yours. While glad to
learn anything I can from you, I have only done my duty, for which
I claim no credit--only done as I would wish to be done by--in
communicating to you such facts, and the unmistakable inference from
such facts, as were secrets with others until they came to me, and
secrets with me until I now communicate them to you, and through you and
the printed page to the rest of the world.
And now, what is your and my duty in the premises? Is it to sit with
folded hands and see our glorious republic drift on and on until it
falls into the hands of the Democratic party, and then into the hands
of European sovereigns, and then is blotted out in one eternal night?
Or shall we not rather (as Gough so graphically pictures in one of his
inimitable lectures) cry aloud to those whom we see carelessly sailing
on the river of Time--the Niagara River,--only a little way above the
rapids, and within plain hearing of the thundering of the all-devouring
falls--"Young men, ahoy there; the rapids are below you!" And if they
should at first respond with a "Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff; all
things delight us; what care we for the future?"--then to cry again,
still louder than before, "Beware! Beware! The rapids are below you!"
and if, after all this, they still go shrieking, howling, blaspheming
over the falls of the river of Time, your skirts and mine will be free
of their blood.
Or, to change the metaphor, my friend, let you and I and all of us who
love a representative form of government, who love the freedom of the
press, who love our own glorious republic--let us, whenever we see the
"ship of state" floundering in the breakers and liable to be engulphed
by the angry waves of passion, hate, and self-interest, imitate the
example of our blessed Saviour, and cry aloud, "Peace; be still!" and
though we may not, like Him, calm the waves by miraculous power, yet, if
with our cry we put our shoulders firmly together, and pull at the same
end of the rope, all of us who really love the republic--the honest
Democrat with the honest Republican, the honest Catholic with the honest
Protestant--we and our descendants may save the "ship of state" from
sinking, at least for many years, if not for many centuries to come. And
may God bless and prosper every such united effort for the saving of our
glorious republic!
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Secrets of the Late Rebellion, by J. R. Freese