Democratic Standard

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For the Standard.
Fellow Citizen:

Your attention is invited for a few moments to the subject of knowledge and virtue, unto which every good-hearted republican must acknowledge the deepest gratitude. Unto knowledge and virtue as unto the mighty God of heaven all must yield obedience; before them the mightiest monarchs of Earth do tremble and fall. They are the chief corner stones of every confederacy. They alone approach nearest the pinnacle of true glory. They alone procure liberty or death to a nation. If you would liberate a nation, first give it knowledge—if you would enslave it, withhold it. If as a nation we would become more transcendent let us shed abroad more the benign rays of knowledge and virtue, which like the bright luminary of day rising in yonder East, dispels the dark and gloomy shades of night, and with its effulgent rays illuminates the vast orb. If we would realize those things, we must not only seek for the empty name of scholars, which indeed we are not; we must not only aim to please, but to convict, which if we surmount, we must betake ourselves from the sports of children, and from those vain and foolish pursuits, which are but too common at the present day.

Think you that a Demosthenes or Cicero, or even any of more remote antiquity, ever scaled the lofty summits of honor and fame, and received the approbation and applause of all succeeding generations, by giving a loose rein to all their natural desires and inclinations? No. History interposes, and in the most impressive manner declares that a Demosthenes conquered impediments of nature, which would be counted folly for a youth to undertake at the present day. Not only did he place small pebbles under his tongue to conquer the impediments of his speech; not only did he place himself immediately under two sharp-pointed swords to conquer his disagreeable gestures, but shaved his head and concealed himself in a subterranean cave, and thus prevented himself from frequenting those sports which were common to all, and improved those talents which God and Nature had given him. And although now their bodies moulder in the dust, and their spirits have entered upon their eternal course, their names still live and remain bright as the morning star, and clear as the noon-day sun. And just so it is at the present day, if we, my young friends, would be of any service to our country, we must be diligent; if we would become a disgrace to ourselves and to society, we may be negligent. How often do we see the man whose head has grown white, his steps tottering, and he, reeling almost on the brink of eternity, lamenting bitterly the bad manner in which he had spent the morning of his life. Then why not take warning and save the fragments of time? The wheels of time roll swiftly on; we are fast cruising down the tide of time, and soon will reach our destined ports. And, fellow-citizens, if knowledge and virtue had not shed their benign influence over the minds of our worthy ancestors, well might we suppose at this hour, instead of breathing delicious air of liberty, and mingling voices together with harmonious consent, we would have been groaning under the yoke of tyranny and oppression. It too often happens in free countries that the inhabitants, intoxicated with liberty, are unable rightly to estimate its value; and being strangers to tyranny, cannot sufficiently discriminate between their own condition and the condition of those who groan under oppression. This perhaps is the reason why republicans pay so little regard to the interest and welfare of their country. An American possessed even of moderate attention, may find sufficient inducement to arouse and sustain his patriotism. The vast world lies exposed around him; the history of all ages and countries is unfolded to his view; he can read of the cruel actions of the despot, and the degraded victims of his cruelty; human nature divested of its dignity, and human beings converted into brutes. Range you the immensity of this wide world, and where will you find a government which possesses such privileges as ours? where so many free schools? where such hospitality to strangers? Can you designate one so entirely free, or in which there is not oppression and corruption? Turkey, Russia, Spain, France, are all fast bound in chains, and the fruit of their labor is snatched from their hands; and even England, free as she is, is loaded with innumerable taxes. If then our condition is so transcendent, if this republic is more glorious than any which the world has ever produced, where is that American whose feelings are so cold, as to behold such a republic with indifference, and to withhold his exertions from its preservation. The public mind is now awake; large salaries are appropriated to our schools; magnificent buildings, stupendous edifices are reared for the promotion of the honor and glory of America, that her light may shine on those who are in midnight darkness, and enable them to divest themselves of their vast and unwieldy load of superstition, and ornament their minds with that knowledge which makes a man meek and lowly in every department of life. And while so many of our fellow-beings are groping their way in the darkness of heathenism, and bigotted in all the superstition of a Pagan idolatry, it is the peculiar privilege of Columbia's free born sons to bask in the sunshine of literature of the arts and sciences, and of all the various enjoyments of a civilized and refined state of society. Nor indeed is knowledge a characteristic peculiar alone to the rich, to those who dwell in richly ornamented houses, who feast at richly spread tables, and who ornament their bodies with the gayest of clothing, but descends even to the humble inmate of the cottage, whose roof scarcely forms a barrier from the scorching heats of day and chilling damps of night. Then while we bring into consideration the fact, that this government with its innumerable and inestimable liberties was not, purchased by suffering the faculties of mankind to lie in a dormant state, but by the utmost human exertion both corporal and mental; by the din of war and thunder of artillery—then let us prove ourselves worthy of our forefathers by storing our minds with that knowledge which will render us useful to ourselves, to our fellow citizens and to our country.

A. W. Mo.