The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1860-03-15

mentand disgust at being overruledin his
choice of materials, for any column
Their to be quarried, should have laid
violent hands on the imperfect struc-
ture. and brought it down to the earth,
there to remain wreck, instead of
citadel of worlds best hopes.
l remain now in the opinion have
uniformly expressed here and else
where, that these hasty threats of Dis
union are SO unnatural that they will
find no hand to execute them. We
are OF one race, language, liberty, and
faith engaged, indeed, in varied in
dustry, but even that industry, so d.
versified, brings us into more intimate
relations with each other than any 9TH
err people. however homogeneous, and
though living under a consolidated
Government, ever maintained. We
languish throughout, if one joint of our
Federal frame is smitten; while it is
certain that part discovered must per-
ish. You may refine as you please
about the structure Of the Government,
and say that it is compact, and that
breach, by one of the States or by Con-
gress, or any one article, absolves all
the members from allegiance, and that
the States may seperate when they
have, or fancy they have, cause for war.
But once try to subvert it, and you will
find that it is Government of the
whole people-as individuals, as well
as compact of States that every in
dividual member of the body polite is
conscious 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 a natural
capacity for self-government and
when, as here, they are sufficiently rip
ened by culture, they will and must
have self-government, and no other.
The trainers of our Constitution, with
wisdom that surpassed all previous
understanding among men, adopted it
to these inherent elements of human
nature. He strangely, bIindly misun-
understands the anatomy of the great
system, who thinks that its only bonds
or even its strongest ligaments, are the
written compact or the multiplied and
thoroughly ramified roads and thorough
fares of trade, commerce and social in
tercourse. These are strong, indeed,
but its chiefest Instruments of cohesion
those which render it inseporable
and indivisable-are the millions of
fibers of millions of contented, happy
human hearts, binding by their affec-
lions, their ambition and their best
hopes equally the high and the low, the
rich and the poor, the wise and the I'M
wise, the learned and the untutored,
even the good and the bad, to Gov
eminent, the first, and 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, Individually,
once in a year, or in two years, or at
least in fonr years, for their expressed
consent and renewal, without which it
must cease. No, go where you will,
and to what class you may, with COM
missions for your fatal service i'm one
hand, and your bounty counted by the
hundred or the thousand pieces of sill
yer in the other, Thousand resisters
will rise mp for every recruit You can
engage. On the banks equally of the
St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande, on
the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts, on
the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. and
in the dells of the Rocky Mountains,
n fhn Hch IF x1,<
Newfoundland, the weavers and the
spinners of Massachusetts, the steve
dores of New York, the miners of
Pennsylvania, Pixies Peak and Califor-
mia, the wheat-growers of Indiana,
the cotton and the sugar planters on
the Mississippi, among the voluntary
citizens from every other land not less
than the native born, the Christian and
the Jew, among the Indians on the
pralrics, the cOntumacious Mormons in
the Desert, the Africans free, the Afri-
cans in bondage, the inmates of Hospi-
tails and Almshouses, and even the
criminals in the Penitentiaries, rehearse
the story of your wrongs and their own
never SO eluquently and never so
mournfully, and appeal to them to rise.
They will ask you, ais this all ?" "Are
you more Just than Washington, wiser
than Hamilton, more humane than
Jefferson What new form of Gov
ernment or of Union have you the
power to establish, or even the cunning
10 devise, that will be more Just, more
safe. more free, more gentle, more ben
eficent, or more glorious than this %
And by these simple interogatories You
will be silenced and COMPOUNDED.
Mr.. President, we are perpetually
forgetting this subtle and complex, yet
obvious and natural, mechanism of our
Constitution and because we do for
get it, we are continually wondering
how it is that a Confederacy of 80 or
more States, covering regions SO vast,
and regulating interests so varions OF
SO many millions of men, constituted
and conditioned so adversely, works
right on. We are continually looking
to see it stop and stand still, and fall
suddenly into pieces. But, in truth, it
will not stop; it was not made to stop,
but to keep in motion-in motion al
ways, 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 adj.
miration of my earlier years, although
it was then but imperfectly known
abroad, so now, when it forms the cen
trail figure in the economy of the
worlds civilization, and the best sym.
pashies of mankind favor its contiuu-