The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-07-09
RUFUS CHOATE ON THE FOURTH OF July.
AT BOSTON July 1873

mountains can bow and cast themselves into the
sea- Through all their history from the dawn of
the colonial life to this brightness of this rising,
they have spoken them, they have written them,
! they have acted them, they have run over with
! them.
| In all stages in all agonies through all report
good and evil-some learning from the golden times
of ancient and medieval freedom, Greece, and lta-
| ly, and Geneva, from Aristotle from Cicero, and
Bodinas, and Machiavel, and Calvin, or later from
! Harrington, and Sidney and Rousseau; some learn
ing, all reinforcing it directly from Nature and Ma
! ture's Cod all have held and felt that every man
was equal to every other man; that every man had
right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
| and conscience unfettCred; that the people
| the of power and the good of the people
was the political object of society itself
! This creed, so grand, so brcad-n its general and
duly qualified so true-planted the colonies, led
them through the desert and the sea Of ante-revou-
tionary life, rallied them all together to resist the
attacks of a king and minister, sharpened and
pointed the bayOnets of all their battles burst forth
from million lips, beamed in a million eyes, burned
in million bosoms, sounded out in their revou-
tionary eloquence of fire, and in the Declaration
awoke the thunders and cleaned in the lightning of
the deathless words of Otis, Henry and Adams, was
! graved forever on the general mind by the pen of
Jefferson and Paine, as by a steel point a great
rock sun-ighted, survived the excitements of war
and the necessities oforder penetrated and tinged all
our constitutional composition and nomenclature
and stands to-day radiant defiant, iocund tiptoe,
on the SUBMITS of our greatness one authoritative
and louder proclamation to humanity by Freedom,
| the guardian and avengcr.
But in some traits of politics we are not one.
! In some traits we differ from another and
! we change from ourselves. You may say these
are subordinate, executOry, instrumental traits.
Let us not cavil about names, but find the es-
sences of things. Our object is to know the natnre
! of American nationality, and attempting
to do so, first, by contrasting it with its antago
nisms.
There are two great existences, then, in our civil
life which have this in common, though they have
nothing else in common that they may in
conflict with the nationality which describe one
of them constant in its operatOnss constitutional,
healthful auxiliary, even; the other rarer, iegiti
mate, abnormal, terrible; Of them force under
law; the other a violence and phenomenon above
law and against law. 1t is first the capital pecu-
liarity of our system, now a common place in
politics, that the affections which give to
try, give to divided object, the States in
which we live and the Union by which we are
contoded.
We serve two masters. Our hearts own two loves.
Wehve in two countries at once, and are commanded
to be capacious of both. How easy it is to reconcile
these duties in theory how reciprocally more than
compatible, how helpful and Independent they are
in theory, how in this respect our SYSTEMS differ
ences make our systems peace, and from these
| blended colors, and this action and counteracton,
how marvellous beauty and how grand harmo-
ny we draw out, you all know. Practically you
know, too the adjustment has not been quite so
simple. How the Constitution attempts it is plain
enough. There it is: Litera Scripta nanet and
heaven and earth shall pass before one iot or one
tlCtie OF Inat scripture snail iall OF tullmcnt.
SO we all say, and yet how men have divided on
it. How they divided in the great Convention
itself, and in the very presence of Washington.
How the people divided it. How it has
! created parties, lost and given power, bestowed
great regulations, and taken them away; ana col
ored and shaken the universal course of our pub
lie life. But have you considered that in the
nature of things this must he so? Have you ever
! considered that it federal system we had to
adopt, and that in such system conflict
| of head and member is in some form, and to
| some extent, result of course? There the
! States were when we became nation. There they
! had been for one hundred and fifty years; for one
! hundred and seventy years Some power, it was
| agreed on all hands, we must delegate to the new
! Government. OF some thunder, some beams, somo
! insignia some means of handling pride, winning
gratitude, attracting honor love- obedience friends
| all men knew they must be bereavcd and they
! were But when this was done, there were the
States still In the scheme of every statesman, they
renamed component part, unannihilatcd inde-
! structlble. In the scheme of the Constitution of
| compromise itself, they remained a component
| part, indestructbe In the theories of all public
lists, and all specialists, they retained and
they valued for it, to hinder and disarm that
Capitalization which had been found to be the
| danger and the weakness of Federal liberty; and
then when you bear in mind that they are sove-
reignties, quasi, but sovereigntes still that
| OF the most dread and trrnsccndant prerOgatives
| OF soyereignties, the prerogative to take life
| and liberty for crime, is theirs without dis
| pute; that in the theories of some schools
pact, and as such may, and that any of
| them may, secede from the compact when by their
corporate Judgment they deem it to be broken fun
! damentally by the Others and that from such n
! judgment there is appeal to a common peaceful
umpire; that in the theories of some schools they
may call out their young men and their old men
under the pains of death to defy the sword-pont
of the Federal army; that they can pour around
| even the gallows and the tomb of him who died
for treason to the Union honor, opinion, tears,
and thus sustain the last untmely hour, and soothe
the disemboded complaining shade; that every one,
by name. by line of boundary, by jurisdiction, is
distinct from every other, and every one from the
nation; that within their invioate borders lie our
farms our homes, our meeting houses, our graves;
that their laws, their courts their militia, their
police, to Vast extent protect persons from
violence, and our houses from plunder, that their
heaven ripens our harvests their schools form our
childrens moral and mental nature; their charities
or their taxes feed our poor their hospitals or
shelter our insane; that their image, their opinions
their literature, their morality, are around us
ever, presence, monument, an atmosphere when
you consider this, you feel how practical and how
inevitable is that antagOnism to n single national
life, and how true is that buy all blessings
| ar price.
But there is another antogonism to such ma
onal life less constant, less legitimate, less
pensated, more terrible, to which | must refer
not for reprobation, not for warning, not even
I for grief, but that we may know by contrast, ma
tionality itsef-and that is, the element of sec
tions This, too is old, older than the States, as
old the colonies, old the churches that plant
ed them, old as jamestown, old as Plymouth. A
thousand forms disguise and express it, and in
all of them it is hideous: Candtdem Sc" ntgrom
hoe tu Romano caucto. Black or white, as you
are Americans, dread it, shun it! Springing
from many causes and fed by many stimulants;
springing from that diversity of climate, business
institutions, accomplishment, and morality, which
comes of our greatness, and cOmpels and should
constitute order and our agreement; but which
only makes their difficulty and their merit; from
that self-love and selfpreterence which are their
1n,.d
Gus, of what is wise and holy; from the fear Of
ignorance, the jealousy Of ignorance, the narrow
ness of ignorance; from incapacity to abstract
combine and grasp complex and various object
and thus rise to the dignity of concession and for
bearance, and compromises from the frame of oul
civil poty, the necessities of our public life, anC
the nature of our ambition, which forces all men
not great men-the minister in his parish, the
politician on the stump on election day, the
editor of the party newspaper-to take his rise
or his patronage from intense local opinion
and therefore to do his best to create or reinforce
it; from federate Government; from our
good traits, bad traits and foolish traits from
that vain and vulgar hankering for European
; reputation and respect from European opinion
which forgets that one may know Aristophanes
and Geography, and the Cosmical Unity and Tel
uric Influences and the smaller morals of life and
all the sounding pretensions of philanthropy anC
yet not know America; from that philosophy
falsely so called, which boasts emptily of progress
, renounces traditions, denies God and worship
, itself; from an arrogant and flashy literature
which mistakes new phrase for ney
4 thought, and old nonsense for truth, AM
is glad to exchange for the fame of drawin,
, rooms and parlor windows, and the side
light of a car in motion the approval G
time and the world, from philanthropy which
is short-sghted, inpatient and spasmodic, an
cannot be made to appreciate that its grandest an
surest agent in his eye whose lifetime is Eternity
, and whose periods ages, is a nation. and
sober public opinion, and Il safe and silent &C
vancement, reforming by time; from that spiri
which would rule or ruin, and would reign in he
rather than serve in heaven; springing from thes
causes and stimulated thus, there is an element
regions antagonstic to nationality. Always hav
said there one; always there will be. 1t liite
| its shrek sometimes even above the silver clario
tone that called millions unite for independence
: lt resisted the nomination OF Washington to CON
mann nnr armies. made the new leYirS hate one an