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RIUMULR LORTY-THKLE
GOV. N ORT HEN’S RJNGING SPEECH
"The Majesty of the Lalv” Was Theme of 'Former Executive's Stirring Mddress before Georgia "Baptist Con
tention —Giben to the Public by "Request of That "Body.
The address of Ex-Gov. William J. Northen on
1 ‘The Majesty of the Law,” before the recent
Georgia Baptist Convention at Madison, ought to be
read, preserved and often re-read by every citizen
of the republic. In making request that this nota
ble utterance be given to the public the Convention
felt that it would be an indispensable contribution
to the love of law and order among the people.
And no man has won a clearer right to make such
an utterance than Georgia’s former governor —a
Christian statesman, indeed, who, during his four
years of administration, applied himself with telling
vigor to the prevention of mob law and the prosecu
tion of the lawless. And recently Governor Northen
went widely over the state at his own expense, or
ganizing nearly a hundred Civic Leagues looking to
the enforcement of law and the cultivation of civic
and Christian sympathies between the races. Such
an unselfish patriot has a right to speak. Read this
wholesome message and pass it among your neigh
bors:
S I am to speak, by invitation, upon a
subject vital to our civilization and in
volving some views not fully in accord
with the views of many of our fellow
citizens in the State, I need to be very
careful as to my utterances, and I, there
fore, beg that you allow me to confine
myself strictly to my manuscript. This,
I know, is unpopular and unusual, but
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the occasion so demands.
Further, with the necessary discussion of the
ugly side of our civilization, I shall, more than
likely, be characterized by the extra-conservative as
a pessimist, in the midst of apparent order, content
and seeming prosperity. Let us, therefore, at the
beginning, understand the true definition of the
term —pessimist. The popular idea is altogether
and wholly unsound. In the public mind, a pessi
mist sees no good in the conditions of the common
wealth, and the so-called optimist sees only good
and no evil. At this both stop.
Horace Fletcher strikingly puts it this way: 1 ‘ The
motto of the melioristic-altruistic optimism may be
like this: Whatever should be, or ought to be, or
is desirable to be, can be and must be.” To state
this same view, as Dr. Hillis sees it: “The pessi
mist cries out all is ill, and nothing can be well;
but the optimist declares all is not ill, has not
been ill, and all has not been well. All is not ill
and all is not well, but all can be, and therefore,
all shall be, well.”
This view plainly interpreted would mean: An
optimist sees all the things that are ill, and goes
industriously to work to make them all well; the
ATLANTA, GA.. DECEMBER 10, 1908.
so-called optimist, who is really a pessimist, knows
full well, all the things that are ill, but he never
bestirs himself to make them well, and constantly
cries, “All is well! All is well!”
Still more forcefully stated, no man can be an
optimist until he has exhausted all his resources
for supply and all his energies for execution, to see
that all things that are ill shall be made well. If
this view be true, lam a pronounced optimist. I
see many things that are ill, and I shall exhaust
my resources of supply and my energies for execu
tion, to see that all things ill be made well.
All that is not absolutely just and clean and
righteous in civil government is ill. Any man who
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Ex-Governor W. J. Northen.
is content to let ill things remain ill, because he is,
for any reason, afraid to attempt to make them
well, is a supreme coward and a pessimist, and not
worthy of citizenship in so great and so good a
government as our system could be made, if all ill
things are made well; if men are made true and not
untrue; just and not unjust; clean and not unclean;
righteous and not unrighteous; patriots and not
politicians; and all men optimists in the true sense
of that much abused term.
The great danger to our civilization does not lie in
the lawless, the criminal and the unclean, but in
that larger class of men, who are afraid to say pub
licly, what they believe and what they know, and
then defy the bad. Oh, the countless number of
men, good men, in this State of ours, who are afraid
to come out into the open, and before all the people,
and industriously and wisely, go to work to make
all things that are ill, things that shall be well. All
these men are pessimists, pronounced pessimists,
because they decline to cure the things that are ill.
Civic righteousness in Georgia must be founded
upon the heroism of the good, and the sacrifice and
the service of the loyal and the true, and certainly
not upon the conduct or the will of the bad.
The State is but an aggregation of individual
citizens. Just as the individual citizen is loyal to
the policies of good government, in that much the
State is strong; just as the number of such citizens
approaches the majority, just in that much the
government approaches the ideal.
To make the State a colony of mobs, it is only
necessary to have enough citizens of the four fol
lowing classes: First, the murderers, who con
stitute mobs; second, those who do not at all, favor
mobs, but who do not have the civic courage to
denounce mob violence and openly help, by all
i eans in their power, to prevent the violent lawless
ness of this defiant class; third, those who are
altogether indifferent to such violence, and openly
say it is no business of theirs to encourage or
prevent mobs. This class is perfectly willing for all
things ill to remain permanently ill. Fourth, those
citizens who say they would not join a mob, but
they would shield from punishment those who make
mobs. This class is totally deficient in all purpose
for the civic good. The people of all these classes
are pronounced pessimists, who see the things that
are ill and call them well, and leave them alone, to
the great damage of the State.
After eighteen years of diligent study of the
lawless conditions that are dominant in the State,
because of indifference and inaction on the part
of the people who are good and law-abiding, I am in
position to say, that ten years ago these four classes,
who encourage and make mobs, numbered at least
eighty-five per cent of the general white population
of the State. Since that date, this large per cent
has been greatly reduced, and civic righteousness is
beginning to assert itself through an awakening of
the individual conscience, prompted by growing
civic courage, among the better classes of our peo
ple.
The civic conscience is understood to be the ag
gregated individual conscience of the community.
When the individual conscience reaches the point of
settled, righteous conviction, and then has the
moral courage to make the conviction pronounced
and well known, the social conscience will be
awakened, and men, generally, will begin to think.
It is necessary for these two conditions to obtain
before righteous public opinion becomes operative
(Continued on Page 3.)
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