“THE LESSON OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC FOR THE AMERICAN.”
In more ways than one the Roman Republic is a lesson to the great Republic of the West. Under the above title Prof. Louis Du Pont Syle, of the University of California, gave a lecture in Stiles Hall, Berkeley, April 17, reported in the San Francisco Examiner of the next morning. The following is a part of what he said; it is in great part, by undesigned coincidence, an excellent commentary or side-light on certain prophecies of the Word that this paper has often presented:— “The sudden inroad of corrupting wealth into Rome is paralleled by the amazing material growth of this country in the last fifty years. As Rome subjugated the rich and luxurious East, so did we, by the Mexican War, come into possession of a country which contained and is developing stores of untold riches. We who live in California can realize the direful effects of the gold discoveries upon the moral stamina of this country; the blood of King, murdered in San Francisco, was but one of a long series of tragedies which made thoughtful observers wonder if any greater moral curse had ever fallen upon this land than the discovery of gold on the Pacific Coast. Now, the anarchical state of society produced by the gold discoveries was simply the most violent and open manifestation of the workings of that base and sordid spirit, incompatible with the existence of civic virtue and the healthy growth of free institutions, which Napoleon scored in our English ancestors when he dubbed them ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’ In us the same spirit has been not unjustly called ‘the worship of the almighty dollar.’” “With shame and sorrow let us confess it. The almighty dollar is the god which too many in this country worship with an intensity of fervor that makes us sigh when we think of what the American nation might become had it but a worthier god. Nor is it confined to any one rank or profession. He is worshiped by the clergyman that leaves a $3,000 church and goes to a $5,000 one, if he cloaks his baseness under the vile pretense of a providential call; he is worshiped by the lawyer that takes a large fee to make the worse appear the better cause; he is worshiped by the newspaper editor that will not speak unpleasant truths to wealthy rascals or to powerful corporations for fear of losing their advertisements; he is worshiped by any man that has no aim, object, or rational enjoyment in life beyond the insane and vulgar desire to be thought richer than his neighbor. The sacrifices which such men offer up to their golden god are often very bloody; they consist of the tired limbs and wearied brains of poor, overworked shop-girls; of the frozen hands and consumptive coughs of motormen and gripmen working fourteen and sixteen hours a day; of the hard lives and agonizing deaths of many a poor railroad and steamship hand, all offered up to the great god of greed.” “If this spirit continues to grow at its present rapid rate, the fate of the American republic is sealed. Save as a warning to future ages, the book of our history might as well be closed to-day as a hundred years hence. No civil institutions, however good, can long withstand the onslaughts of this base and encroaching spirit.” “I doubt very much if Rome ever witnessed more open and wholesale bribing of voters than has this country during some of our presidential elections; on both sides it has been practised with a cynical defiance of public opinion that could mean only this—that public opinion was indifferent to it. Two or three generations of this sort of thing and we shall find ourselves possessing all the forms of free institutions but none of the realities.” “The same causes which led to the fall of the Roman Republic are at work in ours. We have the same sudden increase of enervating wealth, the same influx of foreign-born citizens possessing neither the native feeling nor the native tradition; the same accumulation of unskilled laborers in our great cities—those huge pest-houses where are bred the worst mental and physical diseases to which poor humanity is heir. If we look upon these things with the Roman’s indifference, we shall share the Roman’s fate.” But with what more reason could we hope for a reform in this republic than in that of the Roman? Moreover, the ultimate fate of this government and all others is clearly indicated in the Word of God. The student of that Word is left neither to conjecture nor fancy.