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the JEFFERSONIAN Vol. 111. No. 29. Thos. T. 'Watson’s Speech of Acceptance One of the most fearful statements that was ever made is that “history repeats itself.” Take the words lightly, and they make no very great Impression; study them deeply, and you stand appalled. The clash of armies, the horrors of war, the carnage which spared neither age nor sex — history is full of it, and when “history repeats itself,” the slopes of another Gettysburg will run red with blood, the fiery broom will sweep other Shenandoah valleys, and other Atlantas and Columbias will be fed to the flames on some other “Sherman’s march to rue sea.” The conquest of human reason by the priest; the reign of religious intolerance, with its dun geon, its rack, its stake for the independent thinker, history is full of it; and when “his tory repeats itself,” the world will have once more lost its liberty of conscience, will again hear the shrieks of the victims of inquisition, will again shudder with fear and horror as some other Philip of Spain slaughters his tens of thousands, some other Charles of France fires the signal gun for a massacre of St. Bartholomew. The establishment of the political oligarchy, the use of legislative machinery by one class to rob the others, the exploitation of the unpriv ileged by the privileged, history is full of it; and when “history repeats itself,” we shall again have the rule of the few over the many, the confiscation of the property of the unpriv ileged under forms of law, and the giving to systematized pillage the sacred name of gov ernment. Let us go back to one of the tragic chapters in the annals of the past. It may be that a study of that chapter will arouse us to an appreciation of the dangers which have come upon us. We return to the year 44 B. C. The aristocracy which had declared war on Julius Caesar had been overthrown. For six months this great soldier and lawgiver of antiquity had been at work reforming the Roman system, but now the Ides of March had come, the Ides of March against which the Soothsayer had warned him —the Ides of March had come! — and the daggers which the senatorial conspira tors had been whetting for him were ready. Dull is the imagination which can not picture the scene as Caesar enters the Senate cham ber, goes, without suspicion, to his accustomed seat, is surrounded by the assassins, every one of whom he believes to be his friend, and every one of whom had, a few days before, taken a solemn oath to defend his life; is stabbed from behind, and springs to his feet, to fight, looks around him and finds that he, unarmed, is girlded by armed and relentless men; is pierced and slashed till twenty-three wounds are spilling his life-blood; realizes that the end has come; scorns to gratify his mur derers with a word or sign of fear, covers his face with his mantle, and sinks to die at the foot of Pompey’s statue. Why did Roman aristocrats kill Julius A Weekly Paper Edited by THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON. Atlanta, Ga., Thursday, July 16, 1908. Caesar? What had he done to Rome that the Roman nobles should take bis life? He had abolished imprisonment for debt and by this act had deprived the Roman cap italist of his power to keep his debtor in slav ery. The long Civil war had brought about a great fall in prices, for the rich had hoarded their money. Caesar declared that no creditor should seize the property of those who owed him, unless it was taken at the same price it would have brought had it been put upon the market before the decline in values set in. In Rome, the burdens of government rested most heavily on those who got the least out of it, and most lightly upon those who monopo- Mg ■. ,‘MT in M .’Wk M >, JHIhI THOS. E. WATSON. lized its advantages. Wise, just and fearless, Caesar put high taxes upn the luxuries of life, leaving the necessaries untaxed. In Rome there were usurers who did noth ing but lend money and collect interest. They engaged in no other business, made no invest ments, paid no taxes, contributed nothing to the wealth and well-being of the state. Caesar wished to free the republic of these parasites. Under his law the money-lender was forbidden to lend more than twice the amount which he had invested in real estate; thus the usurer was forced into the class of investors and tax payers. » Great landed estates, cultivated by slave gangs, were the curse of Italy. Caesar com pelled every proprietor to employ free labor, to the extent of one-third of all those who worked for him. Besides this, he adopted a homestead policy. He not only divided out the public domain among the citizens who had no homes, but inaugurated the policy of buying lands with the public funds for the purpose of giving homes to the homeless. Roman cities were thronged with the unem ployed. Three hundred thousand of the poor were fed from the public granaries. Caesar cut off 150,000 names from the lists of free grain distributees, and said to them, in effect: “Yonder is a piece of land offered you by the state; go to it; stay on it; work it, and learn to eat bread in the sweat of your face.” Brutus was one of the assassins who cut Caesar down, and Brutus was a money lender who had been fattening on 48 per cent inter est. There were many of these high-born usurers, and their wrath was intense when Caesar decreed that the rate of interest should not exceed 12 per cent, and that there should be no such thing as the compounding of interest. Caesar revived the law against hoarding. Any capitalist who kept out of circulation a greater sum than $3,000 became a criminal, subject to severe penalties. The idea was, that money should circulate, that it was created for no other purpose, and that who ever hoarded it, thus diminishing the available supply, causing inconvenience and loss to others, committed an offense against his fel low-man and a crime against the state. Oh, that we had had a Caesar in the White House last October, when those Wall street rascals drew into New York City all the avail able cash of the country, hoarded it, and created the panic, which swept this continent like a withering simoom! it was on account of his reform measures that the Roman aristocrats plotted against Caesar; hating the reforms, they murdered the reformer. Byway of parenthesis, let me say that Caesar was the leader of the political party whose members were called the “Populares.” The Latin word “Populares” has the same meaning as the two Greek words, out of which the name Democrats was coined. If you were asked to put into English the exact political classification of Julius Caesar, you would call him a Democrat, or a Populist, it being left to you to say which classic derivation you pre ferred—the Latin or the Greek. “History repeats itself,” and today we have in our own Republic every abuse against which the Roman “Populares” made war. Our public domain has been preyed upon by millionaire plunderers and land-grabbing cor porations until the American people have been stripped of a territory larger than that over which soars the black eagle of Germany. Tim ber thieves, apparently with the connivance of the government, ■ have been allowed to devastate such mighty forest areas that the losses, to us and to our children’s children, direct and indirect, defy human computation. In all directions the terrific energy of the cor poration has driven the public off the public Price five Cents.