239. Rulers

Rulers

Pro_29:2 : ’93When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked heareth rule, the people mourn.’94

Ecc_10:16 : ’93Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning.’94

The morals of a nation seldom rise higher than the virtue of the rulers. George IV makes impurity popular and national. William Wilberforce gives moral tone to a whole empire. Sin bestarred and epauletted makes crime respectable and brings it to canonization. Malarias arise from the swamp and float upward, but moral distempers descend from the mountain to the plain. The slums only disgust men with the bestiality of crime, but dissolute French court or corrupt congressional delegation puts a premium upon iniquity. Many of the sins of the world are only royal exiles. They had a throne once, but they have been turned out, and they come down now to be entertained by the humble and the insignificant.

There is is not a land on earth which has so many moral men in authority as this land. There is not a session of Legislature or Congress or Cabinet but in it are thoroughly Christian men, men whose hands would spurn a bribe, whose cheek has never been flushed with intoxication, whose tongue has never been smitten of blasphemy or stung of a lie; men whose speeches in behalf of the right and against the wrong remind us of the old Scotch Covenanters and the defiant challenge of Martin Luther and the red lightning of Micah and Habakkuk. These times are not half as bad as the times that are gone. I judge so from the fact that Aaron Burr, a man stuffed with iniquity until he could hold no more, the debaucher of the debauched, was a member of the Legislature, then Attorney-General, then a Senator of the United States, then Vice-President, and then at last coming within one vote of the highest position in this nation. I judge it from the fact that more than half a century ago the Governor of this State disbanded the Legislature of New York because it was too corrupt to sit in council.

There is a tendency in our time to extol the past to the disadvantage of the present, and I suppose that sixty years from now there may be persons who will represent some of us as angels, although now things are so unpromising. But the iniquity of the past is no excuse for the public wickedness of today. Those who are in editorial chairs and in pulpits may not hold back the truth. King David must be made to feel the reproof of Nathan, and Felix must tremble before Paul, and we must not walk with muffled feet to avoid waking up some big sinner. If we keep back the truth, what will we do in the day when the Lord rises up in judgment and we are tried not only for what we have said, but for what we have failed to say?

In unrolling the scroll of public wickedness, I first find incompetency for office. If a man struggle for an official position for which he has no qualification, and win that position, he commits a crime against God and against society. It is no sin for me to be ignorant of medical science; but if ignorant of medical science, I set myself up among professional men and trifle with the lives of people, then the charlatanism becomes positive knavery. It is no sin for me to be ignorant of machinery; but if knowing nothing about it I attempt to take a steamer across to Southampton, and through darkness and storm I lose the lives of hundreds of passengers, then all who are slain by that shipwreck may hold me accountable. But what shall I say of those who attempt to doctor our institutions without qualification and who, having no qualification, attempt to engineer our political affairs across the rough and stormy sea?

We had at one time in the Congress of the United States men who put one tariff upon linseed oil and another tariff upon flaxseed oil, not knowing they were the same thing. We have had men in our Legislatures who knew not whether to vote aye or no until they had seen the wink of the leader. Capable civilians, acquainted with all our institutions, run over in a stampede for office by men who have not the first qualification. And so there have been school commissioners sometimes nominated in grog-shops and hurrahed for by the rabble, the men elected not able to read their own commissions. And judges of courts who have given sentence to criminals in such inaccuracy of phraseology that the criminal at the bar has been more amused at the stupidity of the bench than alarmed at the prospect of his own punishment. I arraign incompetency for office as one of the great crimes of this day in public places.

I unroll still further the scroll of public wickedness, and I come to intemperance. There has been a great improvement in this direction. The legislators who were more celebrated for their drunkenness than for their statesmanship are dead or compelled to stay at home. You and I very well remember that there went from the State of New York at one time, and from the State of Delaware, and from the State of Illinois, and from other States men who were notorious everywhere as inebriates. That day is past. The grog-shop under the national Capitol to which our rulers used to go to get inspiration before they spoke upon the great moral and financial and commercial interests of the country, has been abolished; but I am told even now under the national Capitol there are places where our rulers can get some very strong lemonade. But there has been a vast improvement. At one time I went to Washington, to the door of the House of Representatives, and sent in my card to an old friend. I had not seen him for many years, and the last time I saw him he was conspicuous for his integrity and uprightness; but that day when he came out to greet me he was staggering drunk.

The temptation to intemperance in public places is simply terrific. How often there have been men in public places who have disgraced the nation. Of the men who were prominent in political circles twenty-five or thirty years ago, how few died respectable deaths. Those who died of delirium tremens or kindred diseases were in the majority. The doctor fixed up the case very well, and in his report of it said it was gout or it was rheumatism or it was obstruction of the liver or it was exhaustion from patriotic services; but God knew, and we all knew, it was whisky! That which smote the villain in the dark alley smote down the great orator and the great legislator. The one you wrapped in a rough cloth and pushed into a rough coffin and carried out in a box wagon and let him down into a pauper’92s grave without a prayer or a benediction. Around the other gathered the pomp of the land; and lordly men walked with uncovered heads beside the hearse tossing with plumes on the way to a grave to be adorned with a white marble shaft, all four sides covered with eulogium. The one man was killed by logwood rum at two cents a glass, the other by a beverage costing three dollars a bottle. I write both their epitaphs. I write the one epitaph with my lead-pencil on the shingle over the pauper’92s grave; I write the other epitaph with chisel, cutting on the white marble of the Senator: ’93Slain by strong drink.’94

You know as well as I that again and again dissipation has been no hindrance to office in this country. Did we not at one time have a Secretary of the United States carried home dead drunk? Did we not have a Vice-President sworn in so intoxicated the whole land hid its head in shame? Have we not in other times had men in the Congress of the nation by day making pleas in behalf of the interests of the country, and by night illustrating what Solomon said: ’93He goeth after her straightway as an ox to the slaughter and as a fool to the correction of the stocks, until a dart strikes through his liver.’94 Judges and jurors and attorneys sometimes trying important causes by day, and by night carousing together in iniquity.

What was it that defeated the armies sometimes in the Civil War? Drunkenness in the saddle. So again and again in the courts we have had demonstration of the fact that impurity walks under the chandeliers of the mansion and drowses on damask upholstery. Iniquity permitted to run unchallenged if it only be affluent. Stand back and let this libertine ride past in his five-thousand-dollar equipage, but clutch by the neck that poor sinner who transgresses on a small scale, and fetch him up to the police court, and give him a ride in the city van. Down with small villainy! Hurrah for grand iniquity!

If you have not noticed that intemperance is one of the crimes in public places today, you have not been to Albany and you have not been to Harrisburg and you have not been to Trenton and you have not been to Washington. The whole land cries out against the iniquity. But the two political parties are silent lest they lose votes, and many of the newspapers are silent lest they lose subscribers, and many of the pulpits are silent because there are offenders in the pews. Meanwhile God’92s indignation gathers like the flashings around a threatening cloud just before the swoop of a tornado. The whole land cries out to be delivered. The nation sweats great drops of blood. It is crucified, not between two thieves, but between a thousand, while nations pass by wagging their heads, and saying: ’93Aha! aha!’94

I unroll the scroll of public iniquity, and I come to bribery’97bribery by money, bribery by proffered office. Do not charge it upon American institutions. It is a sin we got from the other side the water Francis Bacon, the thinker of his century; Francis Bacon, of whom it was said when men heard him speak they were only fearful that he would stop; Francis Bacon, with all his castles and all his emoluments, destroyed by bribery, fined two hundred thousand dollars, or what is equal to our two hundred thousand dollars, and hurled into London Tower, and his only excuse was that all his predecessors had done the same thing. Lord Chancellor Macclesfield destroyed by bribery. Lord Chancellor Waterbury destroyed by bribery. Benedict Arnold selling the fort in the Highlands for thirty-one thousand five hundred and seventy-five dollars. For this sin Gorgei betrayed Hungary and Ahithophel forsook David and Judas kissed Christ. And it is abroad in our land. You know, in many of the Legislatures of this country, it has been impossible to get a bill through unless it had financial consideration. The question has been asked softly, sometimes very softly asked, in regard to a bill: ’93Is there any money in it?’94 and the lobbies of the Legislatures and the national Capitol have been crowded with railroad men and manufacturers and contractors, and the iniquity has become so great that sometimes reformers and philanthropists have been laughed out of Harrisburg and Albany and Trenton and Washington because they came empty-handed. ’93You vote for this bill and I’92ll vote for that bill.’94 ’93You favor that monopoly of a moneyed institution and I’92ll favor the other monopoly for another institution.’94 And here is a bill that is going to be very hard to get through the Legislature, and you will call some friends together at a midnight banquet, and while they are intoxicated you will have them promise to vote your way. Here are five thousand dollars for prudent distribution in this direction and here are one thousand dollars for prudent distribution in that direction. Now, we are within four votes of having enough. You give five thousand dollars to that intelligent member from Westchester and you give two thousand dollars to that stupid member from Ulster, and now we are within two votes of having it. Give five hundred dollars to this member who will be sick and stay at home and three hundred dollars to this member who will go to see his great-aunt languishing in her last sickness. Now the day has come for the passing of the bill. The speaker’92s gavel strikes. ’93Senators, are you ready for the question? All in favor of voting away these thousands or millions of dollars will say ’91aye.’92’93 ’93Aye, aye, aye, aye!’94 ’93The ayes have it.’94

Some of the finest houses on Madison Square and on Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn Hill and on Beacon street and on Rittenhouse Square were built out of money paid for votes in Legislatures. Five hundred small wheels in political machinery with cogs reaching into one great center wheel, and that wheel has a tire of railroad iron and a crank to it on which Satan puts his hand and turns the center wheel, and that turns the five hundred other wheels of political machinery. While in this country it is becoming harder and harder for the great mass of the people to get a living, there are too many men in this country who have their two millions and their ten millions and their twenty millions, and who carry the legislators in one pocket and the Congress of the United States in the other. And there is trouble ahead, and perhaps revolution. I pray God it may be peaceful revolution and at the ballot-box. The time must come in this country when men shall be sent into public position who cannot be purchased. I do not want the union of Church and State, but I declare that if the Church of God does not show itself in favor of the great mass of the people, as well as in favor of the Lord, the time will come when the Church as an institution will be extinct, and Christ will go down again to the beach, and choose twelve plain, honest fishermen to come up into the apostleship of a new dispensation of righteousness manward and Godward.

You know that bribery is cursing this land. The evil started with its greatest power during the Civil War, when men said: ’93Now you give me this contract above every other applicant, and you shall have ten per cent. of all I make by it. You pass these broken-down cavalry horses as good, and you shall have five thousand dollars as a bonus.’94 ’93Bonus’94 is the word. And so they sent down to your fathers and brothers and sons rice that was worm-eaten and bread that was moldy and meat that was rank and blankets that were shoddy and cavalry horses that stumbled in the charge and tents that sifted the rain into exhausted faces. But it was all right. They got the bonus.

I never so much believed in a republican form of government as I do today, for the simple reason that any other style of government would have been consumed long ago. There have been swindles enacted in this nation within the last thirty years enough to swamp three monarchies. The Democratic party filled its cup of iniquity before it went out of power before the war. Then the Republican party came along, and its opportunities through the contracts were greater, and so it filled its cup of iniquity a little sooner, and there they lie today, the Democratic party and the Republican party, side by side, great loathsome carcasses of iniquity, each one worse than the other. Tens of thousands of good citizens in all the parties; but you know as well as I do that party organization in this country is utterly, utterly corrupt.

Now, if there were nothing for you and for me to do in this matter I would not present this subject. There are several things for us to do. First, stand aloof from all political office, unless you have your moral principles thoroughly settled. Do not go into this blaze of temptation unless you are fireproof. Hundreds of respectable men have been destroyed for this life and the life to come because they had not moral principle to bear the ordeal of office. You go into some office of authority without moral principle, and before you get through you will lie and you will swear and you will gamble and you will steal. You say that is not complimentary. Well, I always was clumsy at compliments.

Another thing for you to do is to be faithful at the ballot-box. Do not stand on your dignity and say: ’93I will not go where the rabble are.’94 If need be, put on your old clothes and just push yourself through amid the unwashed, and vote. Vote for men who love God and hate rum. You cannot say, you ought not to say: ’93I have nothing to do with this matter.’94 Then you will insult the graves of your fathers who died for the establishment of the Government and you will insult the graves of your children who may live to feel the results of your negligence.

Another thing for you to do: evangelize the people. Get the hearts of the people right, and they will vote right. That woman who in Sunday-school teaches six boys how to be Christians will do more for the future of this country than the man who writes the finest essay about the Federal Constitution. I know there are a great many good people who think that God ought to be recognized in the Constitution, and they are making a move in that direction. I am most anxious that God shall be in the hearts of the people. Get their hearts right, and then they will vote right. If there be fifty million people in this country, then at least a fifty-millionth part of the responsibility rests on you. What we want is a great revival of religion reaching from sea to sea, and it is going to come. A newspaper writer asked me in St. Louis a few weeks ago what I thought of revivals. I said I thought so much of them I never put my faith in anything else. We want thousands in a day, hundreds of thousands in a day, nations in a day. Get all the people evangelized, brought under Christianized influences, and these great evils that we now so much deplore will be banished from the land.

And remember that we are at last to be judged, not as nations, but as individuals’97in that day when empires and republics shall alike go down and we shall have to give account for ourselves, for what we have done and for what we have neglected to do’97in that day when the earth itself will be a heap of ashes scattered in the blast of the nostrils of the Lord God Almighty. God save the commonwealth of New York! God save the United States of America!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage