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Show H APOSTLES OF DEGENERATION. B Th& Commoner copies an extract from the H speech or lecture delivered in the old days by H J S. S. Prentiss, on Lafayette, which closed with B these Words: HI ' ' When hereafter a gallant people are fighting Hj for freedom against the oppressor, and their cause I begins to wane before the mercenary bands of ! tyranny, then will the name of Lafayette become I the watchword that will strike terror on the i tyrant's ear, and nerve with redoubled vigor the H( J freeman's arm. At that name many a heart, be- Hj ' fore unmoved, will wake In the glorious cause, and Hi j many a sword rusting ingloriously In its scabbard H , will leap forth to battle. Lafayette needs no H mausoleum. His fame is mingled with the na- H tion's history; his epitaph is engraved upon the H i hearts of men." H lj The Commoner doubts the above. It cites H ! ' the faot that we withheld from Kruger and his H ,) 'company the sympathy which we were glad to H If receiye from France, and concludes that "our own H IS i actions not only fail to give any encouragement to those people (who are struggling for liberty) but on the contrary have been a hindrance to thpse who are entitled to our sympathy." Can Bryan never 'outgrow that rot? Can he never cease to insult the memories of our fathers by placing them on a level .with Boers or headhunting head-hunting Filipinos? Old Kruger went down because he deserved to He was a treaty-breaker, a covenant-breaker, a born tyrant He made treaties and when his own supreme court refused to neutralize them he rearranged his supreme court lie sold the Rand mines to the English buyers, then sought to tax them out of the country. He enslaved the Kaffirs; he gathered to himself an immense fortune, not for the state but for himself. Finally he precipitated pre-cipitated a war upon the English and when the tide seemed to be turning against him and his people were destitute and suffering, instead of being the shepherd he had always professed to be, he took his fortune and with It escaped to Europe, leaving his people in the lurch. Then the Boers are not a bit like our forefathers. There Is no progress, none of the higher ideas of liberty and the inherent rights of men. Put them in any country and they would be a brake on enterprise and progress. The reason they left Cape Colony and emigrated beyond the Vaal, was to save their slaves which the British government govern-ment decreed should "bo free after a certain date. Great Britain went to their rescue when they were about to be exterminated and they gave tp Great Britain the sovereignty of their country. Great Britain is stretching her road from Cairo to the Cape. She could not stop at the borders of Boer land. The Boer either had to afllljate with the British or get out. Had he accepted hq first alternative every Boer would have bqn as free to do any legitimate thing as any Englishman. English-man. As It was old man Kruger sought to turn back the Inevitable and lost. It had to be so. All that the sentimental sympathy which such men as Mr Bryan expressed for them amounted to nothing except to inspire unfounded hopes and to cause more of them to be killed. It is the game way with the Filipinos except that they were never Lalf-clvillzed and had no possible conception of liberty subject to righteous laws. And what i our country is doing there meets with the approval 1 of every man who has ever been there and who 1 wants justice done. 1 It dO$g not milch matter but it is irritating 1 to read every day that the cause of the Boers and J the cause of the Filipinos is such a cause as J was that of the fathers of our country; that old J Kruger was a second Washington and Aguinaldo 1 a second Jefferson. i It is irritating because it is not truo. And f further the American race is not degenerating 1 We have as big men now as were the big men of J 177G; our country is the finest and best In the i world; our people are the most generous race J below the stars. There is no occasion for degen- erate Americans to preach the degeneration of our race. 1 |