DEMOSTHENES TO THE ATHENIANS.

89

scure uses; you suffer your allies to perish in time of peace, whom you preserved in time of war; and to sum up all, you yourselves, by your mercenary court and servile resignation to the will and pleasure of designing, insidious leaders, abet, encourage, and strengthen the most dangerous and formidable of our enemies.

Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers of your own ruin. Lives there a man who has confidence enough to deny it? Let him arise and assign, if he can, any other cause of the success and prosperity of Philip. "But," you reply, "what Athens may have lost in reputation abroad, she has gained in splendor at home. Was there ever a greater appearance of prosperity? a greater face of plenty? Is not the city enlarged? Are not the streets better paved, houses repaired and beautified?"

Away with such trifles! Shall I be paid with counters? An old square new-vamped up! a fountain! an aqueduct! Are these acquisitions to brag of?

Cast your eyes upon the magistrates under whose ministry you boast these precious improvements. Behold the despicable creatures raised all at once from dirt to opulence, from the lowest obscurity to the highest honors. Have not some of these upstarts built private houses and seats vying with the most sumptuous of our public palaces? And how have their fortunes and their power increased but as the commonwealth has been ruined and impoverished?

To what are we to impute these disorders, and to what cause assign the decay of a state so powerful and flourishing in past times? The reason is plain. The servant is now become the master. The magis-

90

A BETTER TIME IS COMING.

trate was then subservient to the people; punishments and rewards were properties of the people; all honors and preferments were disposed by the voice and favor of the people; but the magistrate, now, has usurped the right of the people, and exercises an arbitrary authority over his ancient and natural lord.

You, miserable people, from being the ruler, are become the servant; from being the master, the dependant; happy that these governors, into whose hands you have thus resigned your own power, are so good and so gracious as to continue your poor allowance to see plays.

42. A BETTER TIME IS COMING.

AYS shall come, such as were never known;

ᎠᏎ

The nations, starting from their sleep,

Shall hurl in dust each kingly throne,
Earth's proud ones wail and weep.
Then Vengeance shall the tocsin toll!
Then Revolution's storm shall roll!
With the strong surging of the soul,
Like the surging of the deep!

Up through the tempest man must go,
Meeting his trampler, brother man;
Face as he may the tide of woe,

Or sink beneath the ban;

Charge home Oppression's countless horde,
With ballot, or defiant word,

Or carve his red way with the sword,

O'er all the broad earth's span.

A FREE PRESS.

E'en now, for Thought has come to bless,
Discussion wakes desire,

And ceaseless, day and night, the Press
Drops thick its leaves of fire!

In crowded shop and dusty room,
Above the din of wheel and loom,

Ring high o'er the trip-hammer's boom,
The lays from Labor's lyre.

That day is hastening - Wrong must yield;
The seed is broadcast o'er the land;
Thick as the tall grain in the field

Shall the Reformers stand!

And who their mighty march shall stay?
Who meet them in their stern array ?
What power shall cope, in fierce affray,
With Labor's myriad band?

91

43. A FREE PRESS.

GENTLEMEN: I propose a toast to the Press

to the Press of all nations; to a free Press; to a Press powerful, glorious, and fertile.

Gentlemen, the Press is the light of the social. world, and wherever there is light there is something of Providence. Thought is something more than a right; it is the very breath of man. He who fetters thought strikes at man himself. To speak, to write, to print, to publish, are, in point of right, identical things. They are circles constantly enlarging themselves from intelligence into action. They are the sounding waves of thought. Of all these circlesof all these rays of the human mind-the widest is

92

the Press.

A FREE PRESS.

The diameter of the Press is the diameter

of civilization itself.

The Press is force. Why? Because it is intelligence. It is the living clarion; it sounds the réveille of nations; it loudly announces the advent of justice; it holds no account of night, except to salute the dawn; it becomes day, and warms the world.

In the age in which we live there is no salvation without liberty of the Press, but, on the contrary, misdirection, shipwreck, disaster, everywhere. There are at present certain questions which are the questions of the age, which are before us, and are inevitable. Pauperism, the production and distribution of wealth, money, credit, labor, wages, the rights of women, who constitute half the human race, the right of a child who demands I say demands gratuitous and compulsory education; the right of soul, which implies religious liberty, these are the problems. With a free Press they have light thrown upon them; they are practicable; we may attack them, and solve them; but without the Press there is profound darkness, and these problems at once become formidable.

Gentlemen, who are the auxiliaries of the patriot? The Press. What is the terror of the coward and the traitor? The Press. What is the dread of tyrants? The Press.

I recollect some remarkable words of a certain Pope. Having present in his mind the old dragon and beast of the Apocalypse, he thus described the Press in his monkish and barbarous Latin:

"A fiery throat, darkness, a fierce rush, with a horrid noise." I do not object to the description. The portrait is

A FREE PRESS.

93

striking. A mouth of fire, smoke, prodigious rapidity, formidable noise. Just so. It is a locomotive which is passing; it is the Press, the mighty and holy locomotive of progress. Where is it going? Where is it dragging civilization ? Where is this powerful pilot engine carrying nations? The tunnel is long, obscure, and terrible, for we may say that Humanity is yet underground, so much matter envelops and crushes it, so many superstitions, prejudices, and tyrannies form a thick vault around it, and so much darkness is above it.

Alas! since man's birth, the whole of history has been subterranean. We see nowhere the divine ray; but in the nineteenth century, in our day, there is hope, there is certainty. Yonder, far in the distance, a luminous point appears. It increases; it increases every moment; it is the future, the end of woe, the dawn of joy; it is the Canaan, the future land where we shall have around us only brethren, and above us heaven.

Strength to the sacred locomotive! Courage to thought; courage to science; courage to philosophy; courage to the Press. The hour is drawing nigh when mind, delivered at last from this dismal tunnel of six thousand years, will suddenly burst forth in all its dazzling brightness. All hail to the Press, to its power, to its glory, to its efficiency, to its liberty in Germany, in Switzerland, in Italy, in Spain, in England, in America, and to its emancipation elsewhere.