THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC.
The Republic has reached a critical point in its history. Around the ideal of free government, erected by the great apostles of liberty, a stubborn conflict is being waged between the genius of despotism and the spirit of freedom; and the most alarming aspect of the battle is found in the indifference of the masses in the presence of a supreme peril. The reactionaries, who are at present so aggressive in State, in Church, and in the market-place, embody the spirit of a selfish egoistic materialism which scorns the ideal; and though frequently affecting a lofty morality in speech and action, they exemplify the same brutal indifference to the welfare of others, the same cynicism touching the principles of justice and brotherhood upon which Christianity rests, and which are the key-note of progress and enlightenment, that have been the most marked characteristics of every great nation when, with death chilling its heart, it has blossomed in the glory of a frost-touched maple, whose peculiar splendor is the certain and inevitable herald of barren, leafless, winter-locked limbs. History teaches no more solemn lesson than that whenever conscience ceases to govern and guide a people, whenever justice is thrust aside by greed or ambition; whenever the ideal of duty is supplanted by expediency, and whenever the fundamental demands of the law of solidarity are disregarded in the interests of a few, a nation, by so far as she is thus recreant to her high and holy trust, passes into eclipse, tho for a time her robings of material splendor and the hectic flush upon her cheek may seem to belie the impending doom.—The Arena.