USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Short story of three centuries of Salem : 1626-1926 > Part 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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Immigrants of many classes have, in their time, created new and grave civic problems and added to the always present duty of moulding them to the ideals of the Fathers and creating in them an appreciation of the labors of the centuries laid at their feet. And in the main they have been responsive; the peril of the "Un- guarded Gates" comes only from those who "waste the gifts of Freedom" and bring with them "tiger passions, here to stretch their claws in street and alley". With those rightly disposed we have kept and will keep a generous heart, for liberty is not for a land alone; it is for all humanity.
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The late editor of the Outlook said "Democracy is more than a form of government; it is a spirit of life. It is faith that all men are brothers. It is, therefore, faith in a community of interests, it is the faith that teachers and all material things, and all life's gifts, present or future, are intended for all". The Puritan builder banished all dissenters and was not a religious democrat for "the religious democrat respects creeds and because he respects his fellow men, he respects their religious convictions". The Puritans lacked a sense of the beauti- ful; this writer says "the democrat goes to the great artists, to Rembrant, and Titian and Raphael to get ideas of beauty without which he could not have attained". Macauley says of the Puritan, "Like Vane he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millenial year", but today no class wields any sceptre. "Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid His face from him"; but today we suffer no sense of exclusion from God's light or goodness. The Puritan "was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions, hearing the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends". Today religion is more rational and religious emotions are giving way to practical Christianity.
Policies in religion, education and government have been fruitful of dissension, but the democratic trend and force of the day has broadened religion and diffused education, while democracy in government has widened to include distant lands and peoples. The evils of democracy are not a few but, in its perfection, democracy is "the sense of manhood in the individual and the spirit of brotherhood in the community". For this sense of brotherhood we should in the future strive, and in con- sidering the racial elements now composing our population we may hope under proper guidance for an enrichment of our community life. It has been said
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"the most glorious ministers of God on earth are those who speak with a life giving energy to other minds, breathing into them the love of truth and virtue, strengthening them to suffer in a good cause and lifting them above the senses of the world".
It is our business, then, to speak with this life giving energy to all those about us, to teach them, and learn ourselves, that superiority lies in wisdom and virtue, that tyranny is only concentrated selfishness and must yield finally to the assault of those who are prejudiced by it, that oft repeated sacrifices are stepping stones in pro- gressive democracy, that tolerance is gentle and precludes force, that racial and religious partisanship will divide a strong union into weak and warring elements, that greatness is measured not by wealth or station but in service for the common good, and that sovereignty, as we view it, means individual duty, and that duty is rooted in the conscience and reason of all of us.
Example will help as it always has, kindness will conquer as it ever does, and firmness will restrain where firmness must be exercised. Except for the settlement period, when fanatical minds held an almost desolating sway, the Puritans and their descendants had leaders who energized, lifted and strengthened the people. Men will follow leaders today as they always have and fair and honest minds must choose them and alert eyes must follow them, and the better minds must speak and act and point the way to those rising slowly to the elevation of enlightened American citizenship. We must keep united; Christianity was not instituted to separate but unite us, not to divide in rancor, partisanship and petty, jealous dispute, but to unite in love, co-operation and peace. Our own Hugh Peters said in Parliament, "all children should be fed though they have different faces and shapes ; unity, not uniformity, is the Christian word".
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John Quincy Adams said, "among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those of veneration for our forefathers and of love for our posterity". On this anniversary, we honor our fore- fathers but we know the past is gone and that we cannot live with it very long except on occasions like the present when the human heart and character sanction a deep retrospect. John Massey, our first born, has long since mouldered in the dust; old Tituba, the Indian witch, is centuries dead; our ships no longer sail the seven seas and only the waves lapping our shores can tell their full story. Conant is three centuries removed from us but in his "utter denial to go away" from Naumkeag, we catch a little of the value of perseverance. And Burrows and Corey speak to us as strongly as in their day of the wondrous strength of spirit, and Pickering, refusing to build our fortunes on the ruins of our neighbors, forces upon us the virtue of unselfishness; and all the fore- fathers speak to us of much true greatness. And though Hawthorne has rested in Sleepy Hollow this many a day, "Oberon" is still running his race along the Milky Way, all soul in a pure and bracing air, and a little visible, at times, we trust, to those who, troubled with their manu- script as he was, look up for inspiration and power to the spacious firmament on starlight nights.
On this anniversary, also, we are solicitous for posterity and the voice from out the future summons us and we must heed its call. "Onward" it cries, onward on the unchartered seas. Onward and upward, too, in civic standards and civic service. We may have a just pride in the past and living descendants of the immi- grants of centuries ago may be proud of their descent but their greater pride must be in posterity. It would not be just on this occasion to forget that succeeding
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immigrants and later settlers from all nations left their impress and their mark, the impress of their patriotism, the mark of their toil and labor. They had their pains and endured the rain and the winds in the field and it was of them and of their toil, as in Wat Tyler's time, that many kept their state. But they were free, these toilers. No burning at the stake, no scourging at the cart wheel awaited them for any religious belief they might entertain ; no insane leadership sent them to deeds of blood ; no king's frown meant their death; no tyranny threatened them. They caught and held the spirit of freedom, willingly gave of their great physical strength in building city and nation and gave, also, their blood and their lives on every battlefield that liberty might live. And they had protection, opportunity, and equality under the law, for we had become a government of laws and not of men. Though democracy has its failings, though the spirit of autocracy is a little assertive here and there, though vulgar wealth still flaunts itself, though we are confused and perplexed by much social injustice, still, on this occasion, we may, at least, all share one solid reflection-that the old tyranny is dead, and it is well.
We are immigrants, all, or the descendants of immi- grants, and any line of ancestry can only go back ultimately to some robber baron or some slavish churl whose descendants through the struggle of the centuries have reached, at last, man's estate. If we of today have and keep the spirit of freedom and justice and patriotism in our hearts, we are of the elect and may claim kindred with the highest on earth. Today, in our country,
"The humblest man stands level with the law; Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed, And with the vision brightening in their eyes Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword".
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It has been said, "the Grecian heart always glowed with patriotic fervor for the city", and a distinguished legal writer tells us that "by civic patriotism is meant the feeling and the taking of a deep, unselfish, earnest, ever-wakeful and active interest in the affairs of one's own city, regarding it as having a distinct personality, a name and interests of its own; all life giving patriotism is local and where civic virtues exist, its life will be healthful and like the ocean will be kept pure by its own ceaseless flow and movement".
For posterity, as for ourselves, we must take this active and unselfish interest in our city. For the average citizen public activities are mostly local. There they may be directly effective and, from there, their efforts will radiate, touching and influencing the higher govern- ments of Commonwealth and Nation. Let us, therefore, love our city in itself and its higher relations ; let us love the city whose founders conquered great natural obstacles into which work a great love went; let us love our city redeemed from religious madness; let us love our city made famous the world over and joined in trade and commerce with the uttermost parts of the sea, to which enterprise the love of great captains went and to which the love of the people contributed; let us love our city for her part in wars for freedom and independence, bringing us the peace and blessings of the latter day ; let us love the city that mothered us, the city that gave generously to native and foreign born all she had of material and inspirational treasure ; let us love our city, giving love its best interpretation, giving it the meaning that to the object of it we offer loyalty, protec- tion and service; loyalty to her best traditions, protection against corruption and malfeasance, service that will parallel in initiative, courage and endurance, in virtue, charity, benevolence and accomplishment, the record of the Fathers.
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