Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1860-03-08

they will find no hand to execute them. We are
of one race, language, liberty, and faith en-.
gagged, indeed, in varied industry, but even that
industry SO diversified, brings us into more init
mate relations with each other than any other
people, however homogeneous and though liv-
ing under consolidated Government, ever
maintained We anguish throughout, if one
joint of our Federal frame is smitten while it
is certain that part discovered must perish
You may refine as you please about the struc-
ture of the Government, and say that it is a
compact, and that breach, by one of the
States or by Congress, of any one article, alb
solves all the members from allegiance, and
that the States may separate when they have,
or fancy they have cause for war. But once
try to subvert it, and you will find that it is a
Government of the whole people-as individu-
ais, as well as compact Of States; that every
individual member of the body-polltIc is con-
scious of his interest and power in it, and knows
that he will be helpless, powerless, hopeless,
when it shall have gone down. Mankind have
a natural right, natural instinct, and nat
ural capacity for self-government and when,
as here, they are sufficiently ripened by culture
they will and must have selfgoyernment and no
other.
The trainers of our Constitution, with wis
dom that surpassed all previous understanding
among men, adapted it to these inherent ele-
ments of human nature. He strangely, blind
ly misunderstands the anatomy of the great sys-
tenn who thinks that its only bonds, or even it's
strongest ligaments, are the written compact or
even the multiplied and thoroughly ramifed
roads and thoroughfares Of trade, commerce
and social Intercourse. These are strong indeed,
but its chiefest instruments of cOhesion--those
which render it inseparable and indivisible-
are the millions of fibres of millions of content
ed human hearts, binding by their affections,
their ambitions. and their best hopes equally
the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the
wise and the unwise, the learned and the untu-
tored, even the good and the bad, to Govern
ment, the first, the last, and the only such one
that has ever existed, which takes equal heed
always of their wants, their wishes, and their
opinions and appeals to them all, individual
ly, once in year, or in two years, or at least
in four years, for their expressed consent and
renewal, without which it must cease. No, go
where you will, and to what class you may,
with commissions for your fatal service in one
hand, and your bounty counted by the hundred
or the thousand pieces of silver in the other, q
thousand resisters will rise up for every recruit
you can engage. On the banks equally of the
OGs AdWIotlC6 dtEN Vi OuO AbAO NtduO0S Ou
Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, on the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico, and in the dells Of the
Rocky Mountains, among the fishermen on the
Banks of Newfoundland, the weavers and spin
ners Of Massachusetts, the stevedores of New
York, the miners of Pennsylvania, Pixies Peak
and California, the wheat growers of Indiana,
the cotton and sugar planters on the Mississip-
pi, among the voluntary citizens from every
other land not less than native born, the Chris
tian and the Jew, among the Indians on the
prairies, the contumaciOus MormOns in Deseret ;
the Africans free, the Africans in bondage, the
inmates Of hospitals, and almshouses, and even
the criminals in the penitentiaries, rehearse the
story of your wrongs and their own never 90 ell |
Oquently and never so mournfully, and appeal
to them to rise. They will ask you " Is this |
alp" care you more just than Washington,
wiser than Hamilton, more humane than JEFF |
ferson?" I" What new form of government or
of union have you the power to establish, or
even the cunning to devise, that will be moro
just, more safe, more free, more gentle, more
bene6cent or more glorious than this ?" And |
BY these simple interrogatories you will be 81 |
leuced and COMPOUNDED.
MIR. President, we are perpetually forgetting |
this subtle and complex, yet obvious and natu-
raj, mechanism of our Constitution ; and be-
cause we do forget it, we are continually Won
dering how it is that a Confederacy of thirty |
and more States, covering regions SO vast, and ]
regulating interests 80 various of 30 many mil |
lions of men, constituted and conditioned so d. |
versely, works right on. We are continually
looking to see it stop and stand STILL or fall sud-
denly into pieces. But, in truth, it will not
stop; it cannot stop; it was made not to stop,
but to keep in motion--in motion always, and
without force. For my own part, as this
wonderful machine, when it had newly come
from the hands of its almost divine inventors,
was the admiration of my earlier years, al
though it was then but imperfectly known
abroad, 30 now, when it forms the central figure
in the economy of the worlds civilization, and
the best sympathies of mankind favor its con-
tinuence, expect that it will stand and work
right on until men shall fear its failure no more
than we now apprehend that the sun will cease
to hold his eternal place in the heavens.
Nevertheless, do not expect to see this pure
ly popular, though majestic, system always
working on unattended by the presence and ex-
hibition of human temper and human passions.
That would be to expect to enjoy rewards, ben
efts, and blessings, without labor, care and
watchfulness, an expectation contrary to divine
appointment These are the discipline of the
American citizen. and he must inuro himself to
1t. Whom, as now, a great policy fastened
upon the country through its doubts and fears,
confirmed by its habits, and strengthened by
personal interests and ambitions, is to be relax
ed and changed. in order that the nation may
have its Just and natural and free developments,
then, indeed all the winds of controversy are
let loose upon us from all points of the political
compass, we see objects and men only through
hazes, mists, and doubtful lurld lights. The
earth seems to be hcaving under our feet. and