Mr. Hammond has proclaimed
the accession of King Cotton, but he seems to have forgotten that
history is not without examples of kings who have lost their crowns
through the folly and false security of their ministers. It is quite
true that there is a large class of reasoners who would weigh all
questions of right and wrong in the balance of trade; but--we cannot
bring ourselves to believe that it is a wise political economy which
makes cotton by unmaking men, or a far-seeing statesmanship which
looks on an immediate money-profit as a safe equivalent for a beggared
public sentiment. We think Mr. Hammond even a little premature in
proclaiming the new Pretender. The election of November may prove a
Culloden. Whatever its result, it is to settle, for many years to
come, the question whether the American idea is to govern this
continent, whether the Occidental or the Oriental theory of society is
to mould our future, whether we are to recede from principles which
eighteen Christian centuries have been slowly establishing at the cost
of so many saintly lives at the stake and so many heroic ones on the
scaffold and the battle-field, in favor of some fancied assimilation
to the household arrangements of Abraham, of which all that can be
said with certainty is that they did not add to his domestic
happiness.
We believe that this election is a turning-point in our history; for,
although there are four candidates, there are really, as everybody
knows, but two parties, and a single question that divides them.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282