Standard Selections Part 39

NAPOLEON

THOMAS CORWIN

Napoleon thought France was too small, that Europe should bow down to him. But as soon as this idea took possession of his soul he became powerless, while he meditated the subjugation of Russia. He who holds the winds in his power, gathered the snows from the north and blew them upon his six hundred thousand men. They fled, they froze, they perished. And now the mighty Napoleon, who had resolved on universal dominion, is summoned to answer for the violation of that ancient law, "Thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's." And how is the mighty fallen! He beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now, finally a prisoner on the rock of St.

Helena, and there on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the death-bed of the mighty conqueror. And all his annexations have come to that! His last hour has now come, and he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as in the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless--even as a beggar, so he died. On the wings of a tempest, that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who do not rule in righteousness shall perish from the earth.

NAPOLEON[48]

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the bal.u.s.trade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris--clutched like a wild beast--banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said, "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon my knees and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great."

FOOTNOTE:

[48] By permission of C. P. Farrell, publisher.

NATIONAL CONTROL OF CORPORATIONS[49]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

When this government was founded there were no great individual or corporate fortunes, and commerce and industry were being carried on very much as they had been carried on in the days when Nineveh and Babylon stood in the Mesopotamian Valley. Sails, oars, wheels--those were the instruments of commerce. The pack train, the wagon train, the row boat, the sailing craft--those were the methods of commerce. Everything has been revolutionized in the business world since then, and the progress of civilization from being a dribble has become a torrent. There was no particular need at that time of bothering as to whether the nation or the state had control of corporations. They were easy to control. Now, however, the exact reverse is the case. And remember when I say corporations I do not mean merely trusts, technically so-called, merely combinations of corporations, or corporations under certain peculiar conditions. For instance, some time ago the Attorney General took action against a certain trust. There was considerable discussion as to whether the trust aimed at would not seek to get out from under the law by becoming a single corporation. Now I want laws that will enable us to deal with any evil no matter what shape it takes.

I want to see the government able to get at it definitely, so that the action of the government cannot be evaded by any turning within or without federal or state statutes. At present we have really no efficient control over a big corporation which does business in more than one state. Frequently the corporation has nothing whatever to do with the state in which it is incorporated except to get incorporated; and all its business may be done in entirely different communities--communities which may object very much to the methods of incorporation in the state named. I do not believe that you can get any action by any state, I do not believe it practicable to get action by all the states that will give us satisfactory control of the trusts, of big corporations; and the result is at present that we have a great, powerful, artificial creation which has no creator to which it is responsible. The creator creates it and then it goes and operates somewhere else, and there is no interest on the part of the creator to deal with it. It does not do anything where the creator has power; it operates entirely outside of the creator's jurisdiction.

It is, of course, a mere truism to say that the corporation is the creature of the state, that the state is sovereign. There should be a real and not a nominal sovereign, some one sovereign to which the corporation shall be really and not nominally responsible. At present if we pa.s.s laws n.o.body can tell whether they will amount to anything. That has two bad effects. In the first place, the corporation becomes indifferent to the lawmaking body; and in the next place, the lawmaking body gets into that most pernicious custom of pa.s.sing a law not with reference to what will be done under it, but with reference to its effects upon the opinions of the voters. That is a bad thing. When any body of lawmakers pa.s.ses a law, not simply with reference to whether that law will do good or ill, but with the knowledge that not much will come of it, and yet that perhaps the people as a whole will like to see it on the statute books--it does not speak well for the lawmakers, and it does not speak well for the people either. What I hope to see is power given to the national legislature which shall make the control real. It would be an excellent thing if you could have all the states act on somewhat similar lines so that you would make it unnecessary for the national government to act; but all of you know perfectly well that the states will not act on similar lines. No advance whatever has been made in the direction of intelligent dealing by the states as a collective body with those great corporations.

I am not advocating anything very revolutionary. I am advocating action to prevent anything revolutionary. Now if we can get adequate control by the nation of these great corporations, then we can pa.s.s legislation which will give us the power of regulation and supervision over them.

If the nation had that power, I should advocate as strenuously as I know how that the power should be exercised with extreme caution and self-restraint.

FOOTNOTE:

[49] From a speech delivered at Symphony Hall, Boston, August 25, 1902.

THE NEGRO

HENRY W. GRADY

The love we feel for that race you cannot measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling into sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands, and I thank G.o.d that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or on guard at her chamber door, put a black man's loyalty between her and danger.

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle, a soldier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death--bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that G.o.d will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter day. And out into this new world--strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both--I follow!

And may G.o.d forget my people when they forget these.

NEW ENGLAND

JOSIAH QUINCY

The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history,--the language addressed by every past age of New England to all future ages, is this: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom, nor virtue, nor knowledge, has any vigor or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion.

Men of Ma.s.sachusetts! citizens of Boston! descendants of the early immigrants! consider your blessings; consider your duties. You have an inheritance acquired by the labors and sufferings of six successive generations of ancestors. They founded the fabric of your prosperity in a severe and masculine morality, having intelligence for its cement, and religion for its groundwork. Continue to build on the same foundation, and by the same principles let the extending temple of your country's freedom rise in the spirit of ancient times, in proportions of intellectual and moral architecture,--just, simple, and sublime.

THE NEW SOUTH

HENRY W. GRADY

"There was a South of slavery and secession--that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom--that South, thank G.o.d, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall, in 1866, true then and true now, I shall make my text to-night.

Mr. President and Gentlemen: Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if in that sentence I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it surpa.s.ses the semblance, of original New England hospitality--and honors the sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made plain.

My friends, Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of the colonists, Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost.

He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his honest form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war--an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory--in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home! Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as b.u.t.toning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. Having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find--let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice--what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and beside all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

What does he do--this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely G.o.d, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed.

Never was n.o.bler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South--misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous always. In the record of her social, industrial and political l.u.s.tration we await with confidence the verdict of the world.

The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emanc.i.p.ation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of G.o.d her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten.

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion; revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill--a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men--that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who enn.o.bled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient G.o.d held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil, and the American Union was saved from the wreck of war.