S
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
master-pieces, how much more may we obtain from seeing them presented on the stage. It requires slight observation and a passing acquaintance with the history of the stage to recognize the fact that of all public amusements, the art of acting is the most intellectual. A superior actor must necessarily have rare natural gifts as well as a liberal education. Both nature and art must unite in him to produce excellence. He must be apt at comprehending character and by thorough self-study must become acquainted with those flickering impulses upon which the progress and interest of the play depend. He must be acquainted with the storms and commotions of human passions. This power he can obtain only from a study of actual life. He must also be able to reproduce his own conceptions to the minds of others. In a true dramatic artist these subtile qualities and delicate attainments are combined.
There are certain classes who will not be deprived of the theater by any means. Crying it down as an evil institution may drive from it the better classes, those who would be least liable to suffer injury from any objectionable representation. The lower classes would still continue to attend. The play must be made to suit their taste. The representations must not repel them by their purity. The theater will stoop to gratify the tastes or rather the passious of the most degraded. Those who cater to the public will provide amusement in accordance with public taste.
What, then, is to be done with the theater? It has a vital existence and cannot be disregarded. The theater is irresistible. It must be organized. The people demand public amusements. More than once the overscrupulous Puritan has brought the heavy hand of law against the theater, but it has as frequently broken out in a popular re-action, with no perceptible change wrought upon it, unless per chance to take a lower position in the social scale. Have we not a duty to perform toward it? Is it not worthy of the consideration of thoughtful men and women? If it is allowed to go on without the attention and guidance of those whose influence would tend to purify it, it will not improve, but will truely become a source of evil. It may with proper care become a powerful agent in promoting popular intelligence. In this country, while pulpits were upholding slavery, the theater was made to preach abolition, and contributed in a wonderful way to the education of public sentiment.
The time may come when it will be a recognized fact that the progress and culture of a people depend upon its diversions as well as upon its occupations, and the interests of a national art are not unworthy of the solicitude of a thoughtful statesman.
DEBATE.
AFFIRMATIVE. Wilson Sterling, Oread Society.
Question—Resolved, "That Republicanism will be the ultimate form of government."
My opponent will concede that the best government is the one which finally prevails. We believe men will sometime acknowledge the truth and agree to be ruled by it; that is, to submit to the true and natural form of government. What is this true and natural form? Is it monarchy or democracy? Is it aristocracy, the rule of the few, or is it the rule of the many? Let us examine briefly the grounds upon which the democratic republic bases its claims.
In the first place, it is most consistent with the rights of the individual. Democracy holds that all men have certain inherent rights which society is bound to protect and which can be taken away only for cause. Other systems claim that society grants those rights and may at any time revoke them. This is the fundamental and essential difference. Every man is, by common right and by the law of God, a free man, and is entitled to the full enjoyment of liberty. In the moral government of the world all men stand on an equal footing. No respect is paid to rank or fortune. Every man rests on his own merits and by them he must stand or fall. Since all are equal in the sight of Divinity, who shall dare to say they shall not be equal in the sight of men? Freedom is not a gift to be bestowed by any man, but it is the inherent right of every individual. The republic alone gives these rights their due prominence.
As long as human nature shall be selfish, there will be danger of those in power overstepping their rights. Since the organization of society the ambition of men has been held in check only by popular opposition. Where the people have been powerless to oppose, iron-heeled tyranny has ground all beneath its feet. The history of aristocracy is a standing record of the fallibility of man. The uncontrolled exercise of power in the hands of the few has ever proved detrimental to the interests of the many. History, as well as common sense, proves that magistrates, chosen for the good of the whole people, should be liable to the inspection and restriction of the whole. Rulers are prone to err through selfishness and ambition. It is necessary that some check be imposed on the exercise of their power. There can be no more potent counterpoise to the designs of ambitious men than a vast multitude that hates and fears ambition.
The whole people cannot be supposed to judge amiss on essential points in government, because if they decide in favor of themselves their decision is just, since they thus contribute to the general welfare and advance the public good. The potentates of Europe have, in times past, deceived their subjects by this sophism. "If a question of difference arise between a prince and his subjects, the latter cannot decide it, for that would be setting up judge and party in the same person." But despite the sophistries of magnates, Europe's sturdy sons have kept battering at the walls of feudal despotism until they have broken down many of the barriers that withheld them from their rights, and have reduced the power of their princes to a mere shadow. This work is destined to go on until the poorest peasant between the Caspian Sea and the Bay of Biscay shall dare to stand up before the proudest prince and say, "God made me, too."
The republic promotes the highest development. Man is progressive. One of the strongest demands of his nature is room for expansion. His spirit revolts when he sees himself barred from the greatest possibilities by the inequalities of his political condition. The highest honors of the state should be attainable by her humblest sons. This democratic condition is the strongest incentive to the most strenuous effort. Genius is encouraged to fit itself to take the lead. Why does the simple knowledge that a man was a citizen of Athens in her democratic days create an immediate interest in our minds? Because we know he had every opportunity