In a general way it may be said that Washington created and Lincoln saved
the Union. But along with Washington and Lincoln, Clay makes a good
historic third, for it was the masterful Kentuckian who, joining rare
foresight to surpassing eloquence and leading many eminent men, including
Webster, was able to hold the legions of unrest at bay during the formative
period.
There are those who call these great men "back numbers," who tell us we
have left the past behind us and entered an epoch of more enlightened
progress--who would displace the example of the simple lives they led and
the homely truths they told, to set up a school of philosophy which had
made Athens stare and Rome howl, and, I dare say, is causing the Old
Continentals to turn over in their graves. The self-exploiting spectacle
and bizarre teaching of this school passes the wit of man to fathom.
Professing the ideal and proposing to recreate the Universe, the New
Freedom, as it calls itself, would standardize it. The effect of that would
be to desiccate the human species in human conceit. It would cheapen the
very harps and halos in Heaven and convert the Day of Judgment into a
moving picture show.
I protest that I am not of its kidney. In point of fact, its platitudes
"stick in my gizzard." I belong the rather to those old-fashioned ones--
"Who love their land because it is their own,
And scorn to give aught other reason why;
Who'd shake hands with a king upon his throne,
And think it kindness to his majesty.
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