Edward Everett Hale

“ Strangely enough they want other people to be good though they do not care to be good themselves. The angel who presides over such tests of the most obnoxious people does his very best to secure the triumphs of universal suffrage.
The celebrated epigram of President Lincoln, that you can fool all the people part of the time and a part of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time, is one of the axioms of government upon which rests the successes of universal suffrage. ”

“ Ninety-six per cent of the American people who are doing the work of the world are people who are working with their hearts and souls and brains. The little handful who are left is but the merest fraction of that community which provides the intelligence, the wisdom, the foresight needed in an election. ”

“ In an insidious way, the Middle Age writers, who may be numbered by the thousands to-day, talk about the government of the best being better than the government of the people. But universal suffrage among the People who trust to it does not pretend to a knowledge of the last sweet patents in the science of administration. ”

“ You could not make every man serve in your train bands and die by a bullet from King Philip, and then say that if he escaped he should not share in the government which ordered him hither and thither. In the New England States, in the Revolution, there was no universal suffrage, but every man in the valley of the Connecticut River had to carry his gun in the levy which went out against Burgoyne, unless he were more than fifty-five years old. ”

“ Every obtrusive color distinctly fades out in presence of the union of states, the union of the people, and the communion of religions. There is no aristocracy of wealth, of education, or birth. All the same, the leaders lead; all the same, every man and every woman is encouraged by the "mutual faith of you and me."
It is hardly necessary to add to these general considerations references to the individual men who in what are now nearly three centuries have illustrated what may be called the American Ideal. ”

“ In the classification of men today, the dainty Feudal critics are in the habit of speaking of the masses, as they call them, as if they were people who know nothing and follow like a Roman rabble on the heels of any Cæsar. The truth is that in all those states which are advancing the civilization of the world, the proportion of drudges to workmen is as four to ninety-six. We use “workman” in the proper sense, in which a workman is one who uses spirit to control matter, and a laborer is one who has nothing but his muscle and his weight to use in his daily duty. ”

“ As the Bible says, "The carpenter encourageth the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil." As D'Artagnan and the motto of the Swiss Republic say, all Americans say, "Each for all and all for each." ”

“ Any violation of such freedom is not American. When you see that the boys in an industrial school are not permitted by the Bricklayers' Trades Union to build a certain wall, you know that that prohibition does not come from people who have been educated as Americans.
Second, This means universal education. The feudal nations instruct people in the Three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic. The American states educate all the people, boys and girls, in the thought and language of the time. ”

“ Fifth, Because there is no favored class no one has greater rights because no one has less. The American School of manners, therefore, is a more perfect school of manners than can exist under feudal systems. Indeed, if one may take a fine definition from one of the older writers, a gentleman is one who on necessity abates something from his rights. In a true republic a gentleman is not afraid to do so. Some things follow which the feudal writers do not think of. ”

“ In the old theory of government the ruling class supposed that it could forbid the teaching of reading and writing to such and such persons. In a democratic government, on the other hand, education in all elementary branches is compulsory.
I shall not travel far from my subject if I remind the reader that it was well-nigh a hundred years after the first emigration from Europe before the new Americans found out how essentially different is the American climate from that of England or from that of western Europe. ”

“ The poorest lad of eighteen who paid his tax into the town treasury had his share in maintaining the commerce of the state and of the nation, and to this day it is so. In Europe, almost to our day, the profits of the Post Office were paid to whatever favorite of power had received the Post Office Patent, Heaven knows when, which permitted him to carry the mails and collect the postage—Thurn and Taxes, for instance. ”

“ After the first settlements of the American colonies it was natural that the fathers should look to Europe, and especially to England, for their examples and inspirations. The illustrations in physical matters are curious, sometimes amusing. When the comfortably rich gentlemen of Boston wanted to plant trees on their Common which they had reserved to feed their cows upon and for a training field, they sent for English elms to England and planted them. ”

“ A certain breadth of view in matters of politics, of sociology, or of religion, characterizes the writings of the leading American authors which cannot be expected of writers trained in dissimilar schools. ”

“ So soon as the Revolutionary literature opens upon us we find that the papers on statesmanship or government written by such men as John Dickinson, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Morris, Thomas Jefferson, and a little later, Gouverneur Morris, Timothy Pickering, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Tom Paine show characteristics not to be found till their time in American literature. ”

“ The drunkards and villains in the highest gallery in a cheap theater, men who are going to live tomorrow by thieving, in profligacy, will all the same applaud the sentiments of virtue which they hear upon the stage. ”

“ The reader of these lines does not perhaps know it, but if he shall be in the street when a house is on fire, the officer in charge of extinguishing the fire may order the reader to take a leading hose into an attic or to carry up the ladder to the roof tree—to do any duty connected with it, and the reader will have to obey. The writers bred in feudal countries furnish about half of our daily literature. Such men and women do not know the real basis of half our institutions. ”

“ The chances are undoubtedly that for the high offices of this administration, you will get men who are largely known and well esteemed. It is impossible to elect to high office men absolutely profligate—a bandit, or a thief, or a drunkard. ”

“ Each State may and does call upon every man now to serve in the militia and when occasionally the national government chooses, it calls upon every man between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to go into service under a conscription. ”

“ Third, True Americanism means a very close walk with God, nearer and nearer. This was what the American People began very early when they gave entire freedom of religion to every citizen.
Fourth, True Americanism means of necessity a certain universality, sometimes called Catholicity, as a man assumes duties or privileges. ”

“ Its earliest use in the English language was the limited use which the "Independents" gave to it who were pleading for freedom of individual churches from any supposed superior direction. But so soon as the Revolutionary literature took form, it is clear enough that the writers had got well beyond any European frontier. This is to be noticed even in the writings of Paine, who enlarged his horizon when he changed the heaven which was over his head.
We are to study the lives of those who belong to a new era in history. ”

“ William Henry Furness, whose published work ranges between 1835 and 1895, says squarely that he has never known any man who was brought up under monarchical and hierarchical institutions who knew what Jesus Christ meant when he spoke of the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ If they were attacked by Indians in a frontier village, everybody had to join in the defense. Everybody must have a gun; he must have so much powder and so many yards of match and everybody must turn out at a moment's notice. ”

“ In America, on the other hand, from the beginning, the people had understood that the benefits of the mail accrue to the People and that the People must pay the charges of the mail though this charge be more or less, whether the receipts for the mail are greater than the charges or no. ”

“ That is, they offer to do so, and if a boy or girl will accept the offer he or she is educated. If he is "diligent in his business, he will stand before kings," and the chances are good that he will know more of what they ought to be talking about than the kings do. ”