KY-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest 25 May 2000 Volume 00 : Issue 197 ______________________________X-Message: #1 Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:21:05 -0500 From: Nancy Trice Subject: HISTORY: History of Kentucky, Allen, 1872, pg 247-251 HISTORY OF KENTUCKY, Allen, 1872 [pg 247 - CHILTON ALLAN, cont] quainted with the master minds of the nation, both houses of Congress at that time being distinguished for the large number of great men which they contained. When he returned from Congress in 1837, without application he was offered the presidency of the Board of Internal Improvements of the State. The system of internal improvements had been enacted in his absence, and when he ccepted the office he was unacquainted with the provisions of the law on that subject. On examination he found, to his surprise, that the Board was invested with more real power than had ever been conferred on any body of men in the State. In order to get the bills through, the Legislature had made appropriations on the widest scale for improvements in all parts of the State, with the proviso that the money should not be expended unless in the judgment of the Board the improvement ought to be made. Upon an estimate in was found that the Board had discretion over contracts involving an expenditure of more than a million of dollars. The Board consisted of three members besides the president, residing in different parts of the State, who were seldom all present at any meeting. The chief responsibility devolved on the president, whose duty it was to be always present, and to give checks for money. The old friends of the president, Mr. Allan, came from all parts of the country, claiming their respective appropriations. At that time the highest honors of the State in time to come were associated with his name in common conversation. Temptation for electioneering on so large a scale has seldom been presented to any many -- means so ample to gratify the people under the warrant of law, and when a refusal, to the minds of anxious applicants, seemed a violation of law. Thus situated, on taking a view of the whole ground, Mr. Allan called a meeting of the Board, and told them he was convinced, from the condition of the currency and the banks of the United States, that there would in the course of the year be a general suspension of specie payments, and a real turn in the monetary affairs of the whole nation. That if the public works submitted to their discretion should be placed under contract, that it would, in his opinion, involve the loss of the present means [pg 248] of the State, and that it would then be out of their power to have them completed. That for himself he had come to the determination to make no new contract, and that unless the Board would give a pledge to sustain him he would resign his office. The Board gave the pledge. In a few months afterward there did occur a general suspension of specie payments by the banks, and the State, by his course, was saved from a debt, that might have been contracted, of twelve hundred thousand dollars. He held this office a year, when he resigned, and remained in private life until the year 1842, when there arose another cry for relief laws. To meet this crisis his old constituents again sent him to the Legislature, where he used his zealous exertions in helping to defeat a property law, and what was called a safety fund bank charter, without specie capital. The difficulties then pressing the people soon passed away, and even those who had been most indebted were gratified that relief laws had not been again resorted to. Mr Allan acquired his opinions from the standard writers of the Washington school, and always, with unwavering confidence, adhered to them. In public life he ever acted on the belief that there was no popularity worth possessing that was not gained in the cause of truth; that even in point of poliey, the steady adherence to the principles on which depended the permanent good of the country was more sure of ultimate success than the bending to each succe4ssive breeze of public excitement; that all assumed character, not acted with the zeal of conviction on the theater of life, was a counterfeit upon nature, and would soon depreciate in the public esteem. He denounced in unmeasured terms the fatal scheme that sought to involve the United States in foreign alliances and wars, and maintained that the only rational expectation of improvement in the institutions of the other nations must be founded on the hope of gradual improvement and the reform of abuses, and not on war and sudden revolution; that free government is a science that must be learned, as other branches of knowledge, by the slow developments of time; that all history, as well as the experience of the present age, [pg 249] demonstrates the total incapacity of people who have derived their ideas, habits, and morals from the double despotism of church and state, either to understand or to reduce to successful practice such a government as ours; that it would be just as impossible by war and sudden revolution to communicate to such a people the knowledge of the science of free government, as it would be by such means to teach them astronomy or any other science; that history furnishes no example of such a people having ever come to the enjoyment of a rational liberty by mere successful war; that the American Revolution furnishes no exception to the general rule, because our people had been educated for previous ages in the school and in the enjoyment of liberty -- a science they understood as well before as after the Revolution, which was not undertaken in search of new rights, but in defense of old ones from the encroachment of unconstitutional power; that all the real liberty the world ever enjoyed was brought to light, as was ours, by the improvement of the human mind in the school of progressive ages; that all the revolutions by war, even among the most enlightened people of continental Europe, from the year 1789, have been mere contests among leaders for absolute power, the result of all which has been that the people of France, by universal suffrage, have voted themselves a Dictator to save their property from the hands of robbers, and their throats from the daggers of anarchy; that while the reasoning aculties of man are of slow growth, his passions are developed with the rapidity of instinct, and, consequently, the nations of the world have for the most part been governed by their passions and seldom by their reason; that each nation, owing to the circumstances under which it was formed, is subject to be governed by some peculiar enthusiasm. The origin of our people, their history, their prosperity, their individual vanity, and national glory, all stand associated in their minds with the idea of human liberty. Hence the case with which our enthusiasm, connected with the rights of man, can be made to blaze across the world. A noble enthusiasm, if guided by reason, may perpetuate American liberty. Enthusiasm is the force that moves the world of mankind. Misguided, it is the [pg 250] power by which ambitious men have bound the world in chains. Our peculiar national enthusiasm, diverted from its appropriate object, our own liberty, and misguided by its application to foreign nations, has, in va\rious forms, been the scourge of our land from the year 1789, when it required all the influence of Washington to keep us out of the fires of the French Revolution which desolated Europe. That while our enthusiasm for foreign nations has been of no assistance to any people, it has been chiefly excited for political capital and applied to domestic use. That the only real assistance in the power of the United States to furnish to the progress of rational liberty in the world is by example, literature, intercourse, commerce, peoce, and kindness; that it will require our anxious and sleepless vigilance to preserve our own liberties from discord and foreign intrusion. That while we indulge the hope of seeing our institutions spread over the world, we should ever have before our minds the danger that the words anarchy and despotism will be transferred to America. That there are more than five in the old world, for one in the new, whose interest it is to come here; and now, when space is annihilated by steam, and the nations brought in proximity, the despots of the earth go to the surplus, generous, and depraved part of the population and say to them -- go, take their ballot box, and through it seize the property of America, reduce all to anarchy, and drive the nations to seek shelter under despotism, a task you have already performed in Europe. A cheap mode of conquest. The tax-payers say to the millions of paupers who live on the public charge -- go and relieve us of the burden of your support. The property-holders say to all clans of robbers and thieves -- go and relieve us of your depredations. Hunger says to millions -- go, satisfy the cravings of your appetite. The Pope and the priests of all sects say to their countless followers -- go and erect the true banner of the cross under a Western sun, on the ruins of the temples of revolted heretics. That when these facts are flashing their terrible warning in our faces, instead of the question of intervention, the question should be -- Lord, what shall we do to save the religion Jesus Christ and the politics of George [pg 251] Washington from misguided enthusiasm and the rude shock of the foreign world, ripened for mischief by the corruption of ages? End of ky-footsteps-digest V00 #197 ********************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. 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