USA > New York > Wyoming County > Warsaw > History of the centennial celebration : Warsaw, Wyoming County, New York, June 28-July 2, 1903 : 1803-1903 > Part 8
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Our forefathers, the Puritans and the Pilgrims,-yes, and the great Virginians who co-operated with them in shaping our national life and institutions were men to whom their own personality was intensely real. They were men of mighty will. Their lives will illustrate the words of Trendelenburg,-"It is conscience that preserves the might of the will." Earnestness, energy, lofty pur- pose, resolute perseverance,-all these heroic virtues il-
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Instrate their lives. They had learned (in the days of sudden faction fights and street brawls, when a strong swordsman at your side meant life saved and success won) the meaning of those words of the greatest of the Puritan poets, "Happy the man who walks with that strong-siding champion, Conscience."
The most difficult of all achievements, to get one's ideas actually embodied in life and institutions, our forefathers accomplished. They were whole, manly men. They had the force of will to live out what other men could only dream about. How many men have dreamed the dreams of Plato, of Cicero, of Angustine and Sir Thomas More regarding an "Ideal State, " "A true Commonwealth," a "Republic of God?" But genera- tion after generation let time and life slip past in merely dreaming. Or if they sometimes made the effort to carry into effect such ideas, they soon gave up the task as one far beyond their strength. "My dear phil- osopher," wrote the great Catharine of Russia to Vol- taire, "it is not so easy to write one's ideas on human flesh as on paper." All history bears witness to the difficulty of getting one's ideas embodied in life, worked out in institutions, even when one has the courage to try. But our forefathers were greater than those old builder-kings of Egypt, "who did their days in stone." They wrought their thoughts and purposes into life. With unfaltering persistence of purpose, they lived their lives into institutions that moulded a nation which today is the model for the civilized world. They not only saw the truth, but they were bent upon reducing it to practice. They understood that "living is a total aet, thinking is a partial act." They took that "step from knowing to doing," which Emerson declares "is rarely taken, and when taken, is a step out of the chalk cirele of im- becility into fruitfulness."
The well-organized governments under which the civil- ized people of the world now live are the highest em- bodiment of the result of long continued, unselfish effort on the part of the best men of successive generations. The existence of free governments, with those "cov-
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enanted securities" which they afford to liberty, is no happy accident. No one object which men have pro- posed to themselves has called for such long-continned, strenuous, yet ennobling and beneficent effort, as has the establishment of liberty in institutions and laws. Let not ns who are "to the manner born," undervalue our birthright. Too seldom do we recall the cost to earlier generations of the contests which have made pos- sible such a government as onrs. On one day in the year we are reminded that a million heroes in blue uniform gave their lives that our government might be perpetu- ated. On another day, in another month, the spirit of patriotism is awakened by the memory of that revolu- tionary struggle which freed us from the oppression of a narrow-minded English monarch. But the debt we owe to the boys in blue and to the heroes of the Continental army represents but a trifling item in the long-continued, life-consuming struggle by which there has been won and established for us that constitutional liberty which, the world over, is the proudest heirloom of the English speaking race.
The noblest battle-monuments in the world, it seems to me, are certain of the customs and the legal terms in which are fossilized the history of generations of soul- animating struggle for the establishment of human rights and their defense by law and political institutions.
Take "trial by jury of one's peers." What an enorm- ous advance in the conception of the worth of the aver- age man it chronicles! What obstinate and determined struggles to keep this the law of the land, so that in the scale of justice not the weight of the sword or of the long-purse, not the will of the privileged noble or the subtle policy of a worldly church with its far-reach- ing temporal ambitions, should be allowed to decide the question; but the facts should be found by the sound sense of twelve common men when they had heard the evidence, and the laws and customs of the land should then be fairly applied in every case. No wonder that a brilliant Englishman has declared that "the great end of
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the English constitution is to get twelve honest men into a box! "
Or that safeguard of personal rights so dear to comt- less generations of our ancestors which finds voice in the phrase, "my house is my castle." Think you that prin- ciple was wronght into law and life and kept there through ages in which flourished phindering baron-rob- bers and soldiery,-without countless unchronicled deeds of daring on the part of obsenre ancestors to whom we owe our social and political possibilities?
Recall the debt which constitutional government owes to the principle that "supplies for the government shall be voted by the people's representatives;" and as we remember the glorious struggle waged by Hampden and his peers, the commoners, against Charles' demand for ship-money and his audacions attempts to over-ride parliament, who does not feel himself the debtor of those heroic ancestors of ours?
Remember lettres de cachet in France, with the horrors of a sudden and mysterious disappearance into the liv- ing sepulchres of the Bastile,-and then recall with a thrill of pride and joy the long contest which preceded and has accompanied that simple legal form, which is the protec- tion of the unjustly imprisoned, in which the justice says to the officer of the law, "Do thon have his body before me, to show cause why he should be de- tained as a prisoner." Where is there a nobler battle- monument to victories won for liberty, than in the Latin phrase so heedlessly on our lips, the right of "habeas corpus."
We who live in an atmosphere of freedom do not know how exhilarating is the air we breathe, until we visit those quarters of the globe where liberty is un- known. The man who has looked into the eyes of the fatalists of Asia and Africa, who has seen how heavy with oppression is the air of those lands where rules the unspeakable Turk, and then returns to this, our own dear land of liberty, finds that he is breathing an atmosphere surcharged with hope and with stimulus to joyous activity. Life has a new meaning. Opportunity opens attractively
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before every man. " Every man has a fair chance and knows that he has it,"-and that is true democracy ! the air is overloaded with hope!
Generations of self-denying and public-spirited effort on the part of our ancestors have made possible for us this free and joyous life, under a government that so fully "establishes justice, insures domestic tranquility, and promotes the general welfare."
Who knows what magnificent possibilities await the fuller development of our distinctively American system of government-the fullest autonomy in local affairs, with a national government for the whole, strongly enough centralized to focus the national interests and to hold the allegiance of the entire continent. What are the limits of territory over which a state, a government, may extend? They are fixed by the capacity of the government to retain a relation with all the parts of its territory so close as to insure the vital flow of the life- currents of thought, of interest, of closest representation and effective authority, between the heart at the center and the farthest extremities. These possible limits of territory for a state, have been indefinitely increased by the railroad and the telegraph, the ocean cable and the daily newspaper. A community of interests, the capacity to share the same thought and the same feeling at the same time, is dependent upon the power of the people in all parts of the land to be at the same time cog- nizant to important passing events, and freely to exchange views about these events; and upon their capacity so to share one another's interest, through trade and commerce, and so freely to pass from one part of the national do main to another, that the people of its different sections are in no sense aliens to one another. The history of these last years has demonstrated the truth that our transcon- tinental railroad lines and our mighty lake and river courses of inland commerce, are arteries, and the omni- present network of electric wires and cables is the sys- tem of thread-like nerve-tissue in our body politie; and that by the free and constant circulation through these arteries and the quick sensitiveness of these nerves our
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whole body politie is kept in a state of vigorous, health- ful, unified life! What pessimist dare attempt to set limits to the possibilities of our future growth? With large hope, strong confidence and deep love, do we look to the future of our dear land.
Now the influence of the local unit in our political system, the town, upon the political life of our nation, is deep-seated and far-reaching. No student of the his- tory of our political institutions can fail to recognize the mighty debt which self-goverment in America owes to the town meeting of New England. Its roots are found in the customs of our Teutonie aneestors in Germany, two thousand years ago. Its fruits are seen and felt in Washington today by all who observe our nationai affairs and study our politieal institutions. The most sympa- thetie observer of our American life, Bryee, the English historian and statesman, says, "The town meeting has been the most practical school of self-government in that modern country."
"Of the three or four types of system of loeal govern- ment which I have described, that of the town or town- ship, with its popular primary assembly, is admittedly the best. It is the cheapest and most efficient; it is the most edueative to the citizens who bear a part in it. The town meeting has been not only the source, but the school of demoeraey." (Bryce.)
"It is the small organisms, the towns, that are most powerful and most highly vitalized," in American life. (Bryee.)
Throughout New England the town was the polit- ical unit, and today it continues to be the politieal unit. The organization of the county has been hardly more than a formal judicial district, for convenience in trans- acting the business of the courts. Between the town and the state, no organ of government has intervened. The New England town-meeting perpetuates the old Germanic idea of personal freedom as opposed to the Roman conception of universal dominion. The New England town-meeting dignifies local self-government, and
P
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"in the town-meeting of New England there has ap- peared a steady spirit of self-sufficiency."
From an article by Edward Everett Hale on the town- meeting, let me read yon a paragraph or two:
"A town-meeting is a solemn matter for the day long, perhaps for two or three days. All business stops on that day. The General Court of Massachusetts itself ad- journs for one or two days in March, so that its mem- bers may be present at the town-meeting of their towns." But, "there is no power on carth which can say to a New England town that it must meet on this day or on that day. The town will meet when it chooses to." "In Massa- chusetts we do not dictate to our sovereign." (But onr Massachusetts law says, "Ammal meeting in February, March or April." These spring months are designated be- canse we follow the traditions of our Teutonic farming ancestors who in town meeting plauned for the plauting of the "common land " at this time of the year.)
" Whatever the day is, everybody comes. There is no decent boy over fourteen years old who would not be ashamed if he could not go to the town-meeting, to sit on the back benches, and hear Nahum Smith cross-ques- tion the 'squire or throw in his doubts about the sidewalk ; or to join the applause at the discomfiture of the chair- man of the school committee. There is no possible 'ring' where there is a town-meeting. There is not a 'boss' in this world who has brass enough to stand the inter- rogatory of that grand jury when it is in session. When the selectmen have made their report about that business of crossways, what has been done and what has not been done, then Nahum Smith may rise, whoever he be, and put the fatal question, 'I should like to be informed why the selectmen took the stone from the Red Ilill quarry, and did not take it from the crossroads quarry, which is nearer ? ' If there is any cat beneath that meal, that cat will appear. The town-meeting opens all eyes and ears, and we must all be ready to give an account of ourselves, of what we have done and what we have not done."
Throughout the South, the county with its spacions and isolated plantations became the unit under the state;
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and the township system had no iife. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, adopted certain features of this county system, and attempted to incorporate them with certain features of the town system. In the states of the West and Northwest the influence of the township system is predominant in certain states, that of the comity system in other states. Ohio, Indiana and lowa have no town-meetings. On the other hand, in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the town system has been strongly developed. Since Illinois by constitutional provision granted local option to each county in the matter of adopting the system of township organization, more than four-fifths of the one hundred and two counties of Illinois have adopted the township system. And still farther west, Nebraska and the Dakotas have been strong advocates of the town system, and in their local development have well il- lustrated the advantage of this local unit of self-govern- ment.
Indeed, it was through the face to face intercourse with each other in making of laws, the assessing of taxes, and the voting of supplies by the local town-meeting that our American system was developed. De Tocqueville declares, " The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people came out of the townships and took possession of the states." The town-meeting system of New England, with the Con- necticut idea of equal representation for each town what- ever its population, at a critical juncture in the history of the convention which framed our national constitution in 1787, when failure to unite the small states and the large states had nearly ruined our national life in its very beginning, was taken up and incorporated in our national constitution, giving us equal representation for small and large states in the Senate, and thus power- fully shaping the development of our national life from its very beginning.
The town-meeting promotes self-respect, dignity and morality in the individual citizen. I know not how it may be in the history of these later years at Warsaw; but the older residents of the town who are present can
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remember, 1 am sure, the town meetings which were called once or twice a year in their boyhood, for the transaction of school business and other matters of gen- eral interest. In these meetings we had many of the best features of the New England town-meeting. And perhaps the best of those features was the habit of look- ing at every voter of the town as not only entitled to an equal voice through the ballot, but as worthy of dig- nified consideration and entitled to a fair hearing in all matters that concerned the life of the town, when such matters were under discussion. It is in its wholesome and sane effeet upon the estimate which one neighbor has of another neighbor's political power and interest in political affairs, that the life of our villages and small towns continues to be a healthful, tonic influence in the life of the nation. Neighbors who take counsel together about political affairs which concern their own homes, the management of their own schools and their own children, and the taxation of their own property, develop and retain a respect for each other aud a regard for upright action which are too easily lost when city and distriet bosses and party managers control the entire political activity of the state.
The hope of our American system lies in the worth of the individual citizen. When Bryce was leaving America, after years of careful study devoted to our American institutions, some one asked him what feature of American life had impressed him most deeply. His answer was striking. "That which has impressed me most deeply in your American life is the fact that every man looks into the face of every other man with respect, simply because of his citizenship." This con- ception of the essential dignity of citizenship is our high- est American characteristic. We should gnard it most jealonsly. And nothing tends so much to keep alive this feeling of respect as does the close intercourse of citi- zens with one another in an open, above-board disenssion and decision of questions of local self-government, as well as questions of national political action.
Our national life is rooted in the idea that every man's
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life is of valne in itself, of worth to him, and of most value to the state, when made of the most value to him himself. The keynote of onr American system is found in the fullest and highest development of the individual man and woman-in the strengthening of those " sacred bases of personality " on which rests the fabric of the nation. The strength of our national life depends upon the faithfulness with which we hold by the maxim, "See that then regard every man as having in himself, in the development of his own life, the true object and end of his being, so far as his relations with you are concerned." " Thou shalt not debase, in thyself or in another, the Highest manhood." "Use no man as thy tool; but in thy dealing with every man, consider the importance to him- self of his own life. Honor his manhood, help him to develop it, and on penalty of harm to thine own sonl, see that thou sacrifice not his best interest, his highest man- hood, as a means to thine own selfish ends."
In the light of this principle only can there be wise adjustment of the conflicting elaims and vexed relations of labor to capital. What capital shall do with the laborer is not a mere question of dollars and cents. It is a ques- tion of responsible persons dealing with the essential dig- nity of manhood in a brother man. The sacred element of personality enters into the day's labor.
When you buy of a laboring man all he has in the world to sell on that day,-his voluntary use of his own powers-and buy it at the only time when and in the only place where it can have for him any money value; in buying his working powers for the day, you are dealing with a living soul, made in God's image. The sacred obligation rests on you to see to it that you so manage the bargain as not to force him to debase himself, his own manhood. Respect in every man his right and his duty to use his own life as having in itself its own end.
This same principle finds fruitful application in politi- cal life. To seek for political influence in upright and ueble ways, through convincing the reason and awaken- ing and satisfying right desires, is an honorable ambi-
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tion. But sinee every man is to be regarded as an in- telligent agent, bound to direct his own life toward ra- tional ends and under moral law, how disgraceful be- comes the work of the politician who is known as a elever "manipulator of men." He does not appeal to reason. He does not influenee men as men. He "handles " men as his blind tools. He debases manhood in himself and in others.
We see, too, what a flood of light this principle throws upon the enormous wrong done to manhood by bribery at the ballot-box, whether the price paid is the direet money bribe, or a publie office, which should be a public trust, but is debased to the level of partisan plunder.
The same principle guides us in our efforts to make charitable aid to others a blessing and not a eurse. We have no right to "help" a man in any way that will debase his manhood. To help others to help themselves,- to make our charity build up and not break down self- respeet and manhood-this is the test of wise and true charitable work for others.
In forms of government, too, this is a testing prinei- ple. That is the best form of government which best de- velops the individual man in all his relations to the society in which it prevails. The ideal form of govern- ment is not the perfectly wise and good autoerat ruling, even by the best of codes, a blindly obedient people. The ideal state is an active, intelligent, upward striving peo- ple, ruling themselves at the cost of occasional failures, and with a conseious effort which strengthens and devel- ops those who put into it thought and purpose. This is the American ideal. This is the government that best develops every man who shares in the duties and respons- ibilities of citizenship under its sway. This is the em- bodiment in the state of the maxim, "treat every man as having in the development of himself the end of his own being." This leaves no man to be used as the tool of another man. This is the principle of the government our forefathers founded. And this is the form of gov-
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ernment which most effectively makes manly men. This builds up personality in the individual, and strengthens the body politic because it makes strong each one of its com- ponent parts.
ADDRESS BY HARWOOD A. DUDLEY
At a recent meeting of the Orleans County Pioneer Association, one of the speakers said the word "Pioneers" was a military term and denoted a corps of soldiers sent ahead to prepare the way for the main body of the army following their lead. The term is a very apt one as applied to those hardy woodmen and woodwomen who blaz- cd the way into this region one hundred years ago. Pioneering either in the army or in civil life usually in- volves hardships. Only the bravest and most hardy soldiers are selected for this service in the army and so also it was with the early settlers in this country. They left the ordinary comforts of life and many things regarded as almost indispensible in the older communities, and soldier fashion, brought their rations with them, and when these were exhausted they were thrown on their own resources and often there was a seant larder which could only be refurnished by the most primitive contriv- anees. Hollowing out the top of a stump to pound samp from eorn with a pestle illustrates these home-made de- viees. With mills twenty or thirty miles away, the stump mortar and the hard wood pestle was a last re- sort to ward off starvation.
The early settlers in this country subdued the wildner- ness that they and their children and their grandchildren might have fertile farms and pleasant homes and the modern conveniences of life, and we have "entered into their labors." The material pioneering for this seetion was done in the early years of the nineteenth century. The moral and social pioneering is not yet all accomplished. This we may do when we so live and act as to make the world better for our having lived in it. In this sense Abraham was a pioneer in spiritual religion; Rog- er Williams a pioneer of religious liberty ; William Lloyd
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Garrison and Abraham Lincoln of freedom for slaves; Cromwell and Washington for civil liberty; Panl and Carey for Christian Missions; Gen. Armstrong and Booker T. Washington for education of the negroes.
Pioneering usually involves hardships. It did in the case of the early settlers, and it will in moral and social pioneering. There will be many to sneer and to oppose. But to engage in such enterprises is the only way to be saved from a narrow and selfish spirit. It means the cultivation of the heroie spirit, and nothing is better than that. It is the purest form of patriotism. One who has engaged in such work can die contented and happy, trusting posterity to give him due honor.
Very much has been said and written of the hardy man pioneer, and very much less said and written about the woman pioneer. At one of the "Old Folks' Festi- vals " held several years ago, the account said that "the oldest male guest was Archibald Davidson, a native of Scotland; the oldest female was 82 years of age;" but did not give her name. The "new woman" in these later years is asserting herself. She is being heard from and is not likely to be left out in the published report of any function where she is a factor. She proposes to "stand up and be counted" in any public affair where she takes a part in the proceedings.
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