Staunton Spectator

Tune -- "Yankee Doodle."
By Wm. H. Hayward

Bell and Everett are the men
The people can confide in,
To carry these United States
By voting, not by fighting

Bell and Everett are the men,
We will now support, sirs;
They are true and national,
They will be the toast, sirs.

Let the North meet with the South,
Shake hands in friendly union;
Raise our glorious standard up,
Put down all disunion.

Bell and Everett are the men, & c.

Let the East, the mighty West,
Come with all their banners;
From the ice bound Northern lake,
From the hot Savannahs.

Bell and Everett are the men, & c.

Place them in the Chair of State,
Where the country wants them;
Honor to the good and the great
Always shall surround them.

Bell and Everett are the men, & c.

Then the nation will be safe
From all vile seceders;
Mechanic arts revive again
Under such good leaders.

Bell and Everett are the men, & c.

It is not pleasant to admit that the world is getting worse instead of better, or that any reprehensible habit is becoming more prevalent and common. Especially in a Christian land, and under the influence of the purer religion of which Americans are somewhat inclined to boast, one might look for a higher style of morals and a more uniform outward regard for sacred things. But the world's standard is lower than it used to be when men were less enlightened. The catalogues of mortal sins and of venial offenses have changed their proportions as we have grown in wisdom. So long as we desire to retain a respectable social position, we are called upon to abstain from murder, except it be done according to the code; and theft and lying are acknowledged to offenses against society. -- The decalogue has dwindled down to these narrow limits, and in the place of the comprehensive law that applied to all relations and circumstances of life public opinion has established another code, stringent enough, it may be, but which only affects to regulate actions that have no moral quality whatever.

To discuss the subject of profane swearing, even upon this low ground, it would be difficult to show how the practice is profitable to the swearer. If is important that an excited individual should get off extra steam by the agency of such safety valves, why would not some more innocent expletive answer as well as an oath? Or if nothing else will do it in the moment of strong excitement, how does it pay to toss about the Name that is above all other names in ordinary conversation -- to play with the royal titles of the King of Kings as though he were some idol divinity? If there is profit in the practice, we have never been able to find it out.

There are great numbers of men in the world who are weak enough to abhor profanity and to shun the society of the chivalrous gentlemen who cannot utter a sentence without one or more blasphemies in it. If the influence of these squeamish individuals should ever happen to be necessary to the habitual swearer he tolerably certain to go without it. If the good opinion if the moralist has any value it is great folly to throw it away for the sake of momentary gratification. Very young men swear because they desire to look manly and important, and in our day the quantity and quality of the blasphemies are generally in inverse proportion to the swearer. There is some show of reason about this, but the matured man must find a better excuse. We wear beards now a days, and the hirsute adornments that Dame Nature furnishes better prove our manhood than any quantity of flippant appeals to the Deity can do.

The time was when one of the most infallible marks by which the gentleman was distinguished from the blackguard was the total avoidance of profane expressions on the jaws of the former. We know that swearing was a fashionable vice with some of our ancestors. The Court of the first Charles was a vast manufactory of blasphemies, and the gallant cavaliers of that day swore by exact rule. But the tremendous fulminations which they had invented in more peaceful times were of very little use at Marston Moor and Naseby. And the descendants of the men who were victors in these battles settled in America and brought with them a stricter code of morals, and the swearer was tabooed upon principle. -- Whatever may be said about these rare old worthies, they were certainly men of purer lives than their degenerate successors are apt to believe, and the power of their example was felt through one or two generations. A low fellow was expected to call down curses upon his own head, and he was an outcast because he swore, but no gentleman was guilty of a practice that was considered utterly degrading.

If there is no God of the Universe it is great nonsense to swear by Him, and to lug in His name to strengthen an argument, or to polish a sentence. And if there is -- One, holy and supreme, noting the tail of a sparrow, and heeding the lightest words of man -- some better football should be found than His reverend name.

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