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Hampdens, Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid; which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as ice does: and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic mass of "madness," "hypocrisy," and much else. From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell's falsity has been incredible to me.
At nearly every meeting in this country, some topic of public concern is brought up by essay, talk, general discussion, or formal debate. The views of the "village Hampdens" may not always be economically scientific or scholarly. But it might surprise many people to see how well read the members are and how clearly they can express their ideas.
And then there come contrasts with Washington and others; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said of the Valet, so of the Sceptic: He does not know a Hero when he sees him!
A year later a new Oliver came to keep up the name and tenets of the Hampdens. Oliver Hampden, now the head of the Bar, would not have envied any man on earth had not his wife died a few years later and left him alone with his boy in his big house. Lucy Drayton was born two years after young Oliver Hampden.
But the curse of a life of pleasure is its aversion to useful activity. Talk of the genius that lies crushed and obscure in poverty! Wealth and station have also their mute Miltons and inglorious Hampdens. Alas! how much of deep and true wisdom do we meet among the triflers of the world!
It looked, indeed, for a time as if in the fellowship of these two lads the long-standing feud of the Hampdens and Draytons might be ended, at last. They went to school together at the academy, where their only contests were a generous rivalry.
The ancient rights of these are safeguarded to the people forever by statute no wealth can defy; and, let any nouveau riche of a landlord try to close one of them, and he has to reckon with one of the pluckiest and most persistent organizations of English John Hampdens, the society that makes the protection of these traditional pathways its particular care.
J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, one of those "village Hampdens" whom G. Cleveland discovered when raking the country with a fine-tooth comb in a frantic search for intellectual insects even smaller than himself, says the Bryan Democracy is composed of fanatics, bigots and idiots. He must have seen that brilliant bon mot in the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Poor J. Sterling Morton.
She is as good as any Crawford that ever trod the heather. She came o' the English Hampdens. Whar will ye get better blood than that?" "No Hampdens that ever lived " "Whist! Whist, laird! The Crawfords are like a' ither folk; they have twa legs and twa hands." "He should hae married a Scots lass, though she had carried a milking-pail."
It cannot afford to leave its Miltons mute and inglorious nor to let its village Hampdens waste their strength on petty obstacles while it has great tasks for them to accomplish. In a democracy, when work is to be done men rise to do it.
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