ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS AGO.
By Editor
IN his farewell address, Sept. 17, 1796, George Washington, the first and one of the most highly-honored Presidents of this republic, said, “I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn.” The “Father of His Country” was in a very different frame of mind in regard to grasping a public office from what many men are to-day. Think of the bribery, the general dishonesty and trickery, that are practised in capturing an office to-day, and compare it with the spirit of George Washington a hundred years ago, and it will help you to see how the public men of the nation are degenerating. We know that there was sterling integrity and a high sense of honor among the people in Washington's time, for George Washington was the people's unanimous choice in those days. He was the kind of man they wanted, and they secured him as their chief magistrate. And it was his conscientious convictions of duty, and not his love for office or his thirst for “boodle,” that led him to assume the responsibilities of his high calling from the nation. If there was more than a mere minority of the people to-day who really were concerned about the frightful condition of things, and who demanded better public servants, would they not get them? Did you ever reflect upon this? Did it ever occur to you that there was a deep and far-reaching meaning in this?