E 286 
 .P95 
 1866 
 Copy 1 
 
 €\]t nation ani) tijf Coustitiitioii, 
 
 A N 
 
 r «t f 1 « 
 
 IiKI.IYKltKl) bKrOUK THK 
 
 CITY AUTHORITIES AND CITIZENS OF PROVIDENCE, 
 
 JULY 4, 1866 
 
 H Y J . LEWIS D I M A N 
 
 I I 
 
 PROVIDENCE: 
 
 1' no V IP KN I' i: PliESS COMPANY, CITY P li I N" T Kit S . 
 1 S66. 
 
iljc Uatioii anti tijc Cousiituiion. 
 
 AN 
 
 ^t^tun 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 CITY AUTHORITIES AND CITIZENS OF PROVIDENCE, 
 
 JULY i, IS 66, 
 
 BY J. LEWIS DIM AN, 
 
 PROVIDENCE: 
 
 PROVIDENCE PRESS COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE CITY. 
 
 18 6 6. 
 

 i 
 
 'X'^ 
 
 -2- , 
 
THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS OF THE CITY COUNCIL, 
 
 Passed July 9, 1866. 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of the City Council be and they are hereby 
 tendered to Professor J. Lewis Dijian, for the able and eloquent Oration 
 delivered by him at the late municipal celebration of the anniversary of 
 American Independence. 
 
 Resolved, That the Committee of Arrangements for the Fourth of July 
 Celebration be and they are hereby authorized to request of Professor Diman 
 a copy of the Oration delivered by him on that day, and to cause the same to 
 be published in such manner as they may deem expedient, fo the use of the 
 City Council. 
 
 A true copy : 
 
 Witness, SAMUEL W. BROWN, City Clerk. 
 
OEATION. 
 
 * 
 
 'HO among us, fellow-citizens, can have forgotten 
 ^S^ how much this festival, in former years, was 
 graced by the presence of revolutionary heroes, whose 
 venerable aspect was itself a benediction, as with mute 
 eloquence, more expressive than the living voice, 
 they reminded us of the great price with which 
 our liberties were purchased. Long as they were spared, 
 the conspicuous feature in each procession, we needed 
 nothing to tell us of Bunker Hill, and Saratoga, and 
 Yorktown. One by one they have passed away. I 
 know not whether as I speak the last survives to hear 
 the ringing of bells and the roar of artillery, that 
 certify to our ears the constant and indissoluble alliance 
 of Liberty and Union. They have passed away, but 
 their departure has taken nothing from the sacredness 
 of our festival, for we greet to-day another presence, 
 inspiring the same reverence and gratitude ; and when 
 in all the years to come, we, and our children, and our 
 children's children, gather to these annual rites, 
 the day still shall seem apparelled with the same sacred 
 memories, as we shall say, " These were the men who 
 flew with Burnside to the Capital ; who braved with 
 
6 Oration. 
 
 him the storm at Hatteras; who held with him the 
 bridge at Antietara ; who bore with him the bitter 
 anujuish at Fredericksbura; ; who tasted with him the 
 ecstacy of the supreme hour when the serpent's head 
 was bruised at Richmond." Long as these men survive, 
 how can this day return without awakening in 
 all our breasts a devout emotion? Let it be a day, 
 throughout all the land, of glad rejoicing. Let every 
 bell ring its loudest peal ; let cannon thunder to cannon 
 from every city and village ; let age forget its infirmity, 
 let labor cast aside its burden ; but let it also be a day 
 dedicated to a study of the sacred obligations which 
 those sufferings and sacrifices have imposed. From 
 the triumphal arch that spans our streets, '76 and '66 
 look down upon us. 
 
 Through the tremendous struggle which the fortitude 
 
 O DO 
 
 and valor of these men have brought to a successful 
 close, we have passed to a higher plane of political 
 •experience. Like the patriarch, crowned with the power 
 of a new name by his m3-sterious wrestling with an unseen 
 enemy, we have come from the night of conflict with a 
 new sense of our nationality, with a far profounder 
 appreciation of the meaning of our institutions. The 
 day that broke over our Peniel saw realized the splendid 
 dream of Milton, of "a noble and puissant nation 
 rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and 
 shaking her invincible locks." We had cast off forever 
 the miserable sophistries which for a time had paralyzed 
 political opinion, and stood erect in the consciousness 
 of assured nationality. The night was indeed daik and 
 terrible through which we passed, but remembering 
 the watchful Providence that sustained us, we too may 
 sav, "we have seen God face to face." 
 

 
 RATION. 
 
 It is, then, no disparagement of the good and wise 
 who have gone before us, to claim that we have been 
 brought to a deeper perception of the foundations of 
 our nationahty, and to a more correct interpretation of 
 those great ideas which are incorporated into our body 
 politic. There are things which experience alone can 
 teach, and doubly sad would seem our bitter sacrifices 
 should they leave us no compensating lessons. Against 
 our will the appeal to arms was made, and in the 
 vmerring course of that ria-hteous Providence which 
 holds nations not less than men to an account, they 
 that imagined a vain thing were ruled with a rod of 
 iron and dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel. But in 
 such a political system as ours, the sword can never be 
 the final arbiter. It flashes from its scabbard at the 
 bidding of ideas. The mutual recognition, by the mass 
 of the people, of fundamental principles of policy, is 
 the only safeguard of public peace. " The foundaticn 
 of government," said one of the fathers of the 
 Republic, " is some principle or passion in the minds of 
 the people." 
 
 Nations are only larger men, like men endowed with 
 individual life, obeying analogous laws of growth 
 subject, alas, as the silent gates of Thebes, the tottering 
 columns of the Acropolis, the sunken pavement of the 
 Forum alike testify, to the same decay. And like the 
 individual, the nation comes only in the course of years 
 to know itself, to interpret its own deeper tendencies 
 and instincts. Its moral greatness and energy are 
 always proportioned to this self-consciousness. Ameri- 
 cans have been laughed at for their faith in manifest 
 destiny. Like all supreme convictions of the soul, 
 when not viewed in relation to the whole scope of duty, 
 
8 Oration. 
 
 it may prove the pathway to transgression and ruin. 
 Buta"sense sublime" of some indissoluble relation to the 
 vast range and purposes of that divine administration 
 which overarches all ages and nations, and whose 
 triumphant issue shines from the serene splendors of 
 the latter day, can alone lift any nation to the level of 
 historic greatness. The absence of this conviction 
 leaves the annals of the great oriental monarchies as 
 flat and dry as the Desert of Sahara ; its presence 
 renders the three great successive commonwealths, the 
 Hebrew, the Roman and our own, the noblest growth 
 of time. Instead, then, of remitting our faith in 
 manifest destiny, we ought to covet an ampler sense 
 of our historic mission. Of necessity absorbed in the 
 unexampled growth of a material civilization, the 
 meaning of our own recorded past has remained 
 hitherto an enigma to us. There has been little in its 
 outward form to awaken interest. It is the history, for 
 the most part, of plain, honest men. It is decorated 
 with none of the illusions of antiquity and romance. 
 No venerable monuments of by-gone ages overshadow 
 us with a legendary lore that silently infuses its 
 fascinating lessons. We have lived iu the future more 
 than in the past. Not the most hurtful, discordant, 
 contradictory views aroused us to a just appreciation 
 of our annals. 
 
 Need I mention, in proof of the slight degree to 
 which the nation has reflected on itself, the fact, known 
 to all, that the first philosophic study of our institu- 
 tions proceeded from a foreigner. Nor was this fact 
 without most momentous consequences, for great and 
 undeniable as were the merits of De Tocqueville's book, 
 and far as I should wish to be from detracting anything 
 
Oratiok. 9 
 
 from its well-deserved repute, yet no one, to-day, can 
 doubt that his strange assertion "that the Union was 
 an accident," and his confident prediction that in case 
 of a collision between the States and the Federal 
 authority, the latter must inevitably yield, had a vast 
 and most pernicious influence in shaping the public 
 sentiment of England at the outset of our civil conflict. 
 The conclusions of the fair-minded Frenchman were 
 accepted without dispute, and were the source of 
 those opinions so freely expressed in Parliament and in 
 so many public meetings ; and had England incurred 
 the deep damnation of that step to which at one time 
 she approached so near, had she recognized as one of 
 the family of nations the confederacy whose corner 
 stone was an arrogant denial of what England for years 
 had made her boast, the direful consequences might 
 justly have been traced to this fundamental error 
 respecting the nature of our Federal system which the 
 authority of De Tocqueville had done so much to dis- 
 seminate. Of such vital importance is it to know for 
 ourselves, and to make others comprehend, the true 
 foundations of our nationality. 
 
 The author of the Palmetto Geography, published 
 during the war for the benefit of southern youths, who 
 derived the common law from the book of Leviticus, 
 did not in fact shoot wider of the mark than many of 
 those English writers who have aimed to enlighten their 
 countrymen respecting our institutions. Well read in 
 Thucydides and Aristotle, but ignorant of Hamilton 
 and Madison, they have reasoned from the narrow 
 municipal life of the ancient democracies, to our essen- 
 tially original and imperial system. Misled by names, 
 they have overlooked real distinctions. They have 
 
10 Oeatiox. 
 
 repeated stale aphorisms respecting Republican institu- 
 tions, forgetting, or not caring to remember, that the 
 term Republic has been equally applied to the Dutch 
 Confederation, in which dwelt no direct principle of 
 popular liberty ; to Poland, the most oppressive . com- 
 pound the world has ever seen, of monarchy and aris- 
 tocracy ; to the Italian cities of the middle ages, which 
 were mere oligarchies ; and to imperial Rome, where 
 the distingushing feature of American republicanism, 
 the representative system, was never recognized. 
 Strange to sa}^, the sole English statesman of any note 
 who seems to have seized hold of the fact that there 
 was anything distinctive or peculiar in our liberties, 
 was the leader of the Tory party in the House of 
 Commons, Mr. Disraeli, who termed the United States 
 a " territorial democracy," an apt designation, provided 
 the immense difference be recognized between an 
 American farmer and an European peasant, one of a class 
 which hcs never yet proved itself capable of local self- 
 government. 
 
 We cannot too deeply engrave on all our minds the 
 fact that our political system is an essentially new 
 experiment in the life of States. The form of govern- 
 ment here established has no prototype in any former 
 age. It refuses to conform to the well-known division 
 of Aristotle. We seek in vain to explain it by Greek 
 or Roman analogies. It embodies novel political ideas, 
 and can be explained only from analysis of its own 
 interior principles. For purposes of comparison we 
 may class it, as a recent English writer has done, with 
 the Achaian League, with the Swiss Cantons, with the 
 seven United Provinces of the Netherland, but the 
 resemblance is superficial. Neither in the constitution 
 
S AT 10 N. 11 
 
 of our Federal system, nor in the elements out of 
 which the Federal system itself is formed, is there any 
 real analogy. As our democracy is an original and 
 unexampled democracy, so our Federal system is an 
 original and unexampled Federal system. We shall 
 halt and stumble in all our conclusions, if we do not 
 reason from this postulate. 
 
 Settled for the most part as English colonies, inherit- 
 ing English maxims and usages, copying to a great 
 extent in the method of our colonial administration, 
 English parliamentary forms ; above all, bringing with 
 us across the sea the boon of the Common Law, it has 
 been our habit to regard England as the exclusive 
 source of our political existence. Nor has the error 
 been confined to our side of the Atlantic. England has 
 loved to speak of America as an unruly but vigorous 
 offspring. That our institutions are a mere offshoot- of 
 theirs, has been a favorite opinion, especially with that 
 class of Englishmen who have given us their most 
 hearty sympathy. America, they have repeated, is but 
 another England, without her battlemented castles, her 
 ivied manor-houses, her gray cathedrals, her court and 
 her upper class. New York and Philadelphia and Bos- 
 ton, are Liverpool and Manchester and Edinburgh. In 
 other words, that famous English middle class, whose 
 characteristics Matthew Arnold has so keenly analyzed, 
 reaches in America its perfect growth. 
 
 Without wishing to depreciate the debt we owe to 
 England, I maintain that this theory of the genesis of 
 our political ideas is a radical mistake. We brought 
 much from the mother land, so much that, notwithstand- 
 ing the mean subserviency to selfish interests that has 
 crept over English politics since the treaty of Utrecht, 
 
12 Oration. 
 
 she is old England still ; but the fact cannot be over- 
 looked that into the earliest shaping of our institutions 
 there entered elements not of English growth, elements 
 that were not subordinate and evanescent, but control- 
 ing and permanent. We brought from England, it is 
 true, the grand distinguishing feature of modern society, 
 the representative system, but how altered and expand- 
 ed from the narrow notions of a privilege conferred by 
 royal grace on certain favored corporations was the 
 right here so soon asserted as inseparable from every 
 local municipality. In that one step, from a privilege 
 to a right, was involved the immense transition from the 
 middle ages to modern times. The first perpetuated a 
 class, the second proclaimed the existence of a people. 
 
 When, in the following century, the colonies con- 
 tended, tliat representation and taxation were insepa- 
 rable, though they claimed to be standing on the plat- 
 form of old English liberty, yet it was evident that they 
 asserted a theory of representation unknown to Eng- 
 lish law. The clearest judicial mind then living. Lord 
 Mansfield, saw the difference, and in hi^ place in the 
 House of Lords, he declared that the claim of the col- 
 onies, if grounded in right, went to the whole constitution 
 of the British Empire. As a lawyer. Lord Mansfield's 
 position was impregnable, for English representation 
 from the beginning was prescriptive, the representation 
 of classes, and, to-day, England is struggling for what 
 America, from the beginning, has enjoyed, a true repre- 
 sentation of the people. 
 
 Nor need we search far for the source of this new 
 character which representative institutions here as- 
 sumed. The elder Adams, in a letter to the Abbe de 
 Mably, in 1782, declares that the characteristic feature 
 
Oration. 13 
 
 of New England institutions, which more than anything 
 else gave an impulse to the revolution, was the ^3'stem 
 of town government. But the New England towns 
 Avere the children of the New England churches, the 
 distinctive characteristics of the civil being derived from 
 the ecclesiastical democracy. If, therefore, we would 
 know whence come the distinctive principles that have 
 moulded the New England character, and which, issuing 
 from New England, have done so much to shape the 
 political institutions of the new world, we must go back, 
 not to the common law, not to the writs of Simon de 
 Montfort,but to the mighty dialectics of a French refugee, 
 who, from his asylum amid the Alps, with a zeal con- 
 suming as Loyola's and a logic daring as Eousseau's, 
 scattered the firebrands of revolution in the disguise of 
 divine decrees. It is a memorable fact that the political 
 institutions of this country thus received their most en- 
 ergetic impulse, not from England, but from France ; 
 and the abstract, ideal stamp then impressed upon them 
 has not been effaced to the present day. 
 
 This abstract, ideal tendency that so much marks 
 American political ideas from the traditional, prescrip- 
 tive character of English liberty, is shown in the first 
 assertion of that Declaration which has been read to us 
 to-day,an assertion once hastily condenmed by a famous 
 New England oi'ator as a "glittering generality," but 
 which, he should have known, was old as the jurispru- 
 dence of the Antonines, affirmed, indeed, by the Roman 
 lawyers as a mere legal maxim, but taken up and 
 expanded by the great French jurisconsults, till a legal 
 rule was clothed with the force and influence of a social 
 principle, and passing from the hands of lawyers to the 
 hands of scholars, became a principle of politics which 
 
14 Oration. 
 
 promises, at the present time, to moclify more power- 
 fully than any other the destinies of States. Not, then, 
 to the English, but to the Roman law, do we owe the 
 most characteristic features of our body politic, and our 
 historic mission is not to perpetuate the limited, pre- 
 scriptive rights that have sprung from the middle age, 
 but to complete the illustrious fabric of Roman liberty, 
 which, unlike the systems reared by the barbarian con- 
 querors of Europe, recognized power not as an estate, 
 held for the benefit of the possessors, but as a trust to 
 be exercised for the common good. Whatever may be 
 the analogies between American and English institu- 
 tions, there is a radical distinction between a system 
 which consists in the perpetual balance of separate 
 estates, and a system based on one undivided sov- 
 ereignty. 
 
 The study of our institutions has been legal rather 
 than historical. The lawyer, I know, may urge that 
 we sacrifice the chief advantage of a written constitu- 
 tion if we do not observe the letter. But in politics, as 
 in religion, the letter often killeth. To the legal train- 
 ing of George Greirville, Burke attributed, in great 
 part, that blindness as a statesman, which did so much 
 to precipitate the American Revolution. The ship of 
 State can never be safely steered by slaves to precedent. 
 
 In every country possessing a written constitution, 
 there must be besides, an historic or providential consti- 
 tution, and nothing can be more certain than that the 
 former will never adequately express the latter. Naj', 
 the written may not only fall short of, it may contradict 
 the unwritten. The articles of Confederation, for 
 example, were a written constitution, but they not only 
 did not embody the actual living constitution that had 
 
Oration. 15 
 
 controlled the united action of the colonies, they vir- 
 tually subverted it. The colonies were less a nation 
 under the articles of confederation than they had been 
 while owning a common allegiance to the British 
 Crown. Their inchoate nationality was only marred 
 and defaced by that miserable makeshift, the child of 
 narrow, local jealousies, which served no other purpose 
 than to make them sigh for the unity they had thrown 
 away. 
 
 The written Constitution may exist or not. It may 
 be amended or set aside. It is a human work, the 
 attempt of men to give legal expression to a general 
 fact. But the providential constitution must exist. It 
 is the nation's organic life. It grows with the nation's 
 growth and strengthens with its strength, and no written 
 constitution can have any worth, or can endure for any 
 time, unless the unwritten infuses itself into it. 
 
 " There is a mystery in the soul of State, 
 Which hath an operation more divine 
 Than hreath or pen can give cxpressurc to." 
 
 Let me not be understood to detract from the value 
 or authority of a written constitution. Foreigners 
 have wondered why we were willing to make such 
 sacrifices and shed blood so freely for a piece of jsaper. 
 They little realize the intensity of that inbred rev- 
 erence for Law, which with us amounts almost to a 
 religion. We can never estimate too highly an instru- 
 ment which is, beyond question, the most refined pro- 
 duct of political wisdom the world has ever seen, and 
 the successful establishing of which Lord Brougham 
 himself, in his better days, before a soured and quer- 
 ulous old age had darkened the windows of his mind, 
 declared to be " the most important event in the history 
 
16 
 
 RAT I ox, 
 
 of our species." But the Constitution is not the State. 
 
 The maxim is often uttered, great jurists have given 
 it their endorsement, that ours is a government of laws 
 and not of men. John Adams calls this maxim the very 
 definition of a Republic. When set up as a stay to 
 hasty or illegal action, the maxim is a most sound and 
 wholesome one. For it is unquestionably true that 
 with reference to any private action the law is sov- 
 ereign. The organic claims allegiance from the indi- 
 vidual will. But the maxim ceases to be true when 
 applied, not to one individual, but to the whole body 
 politic. Here, not the law, but the people, is supreme. 
 Not the government, but the State, under God is 
 sovereign. " In the political order," says Mr. Brown- 
 son, " the fact precedes the law. The nation holds not 
 from the law, but the law holds from the nation." 
 
 For the public weal the people may adopt certain 
 rules by which to regulate their action. These rules^ 
 until regularly amended or repealed, are the supreme 
 method. Long as they remain in operation, the}' justly 
 claim of every citizen, not obedience simply, but rev- 
 erence and honor ; but to say that the law governs, is 
 to confuse the fundamental principles of a fi'ee society. 
 " It is certain," says one of the clearest political reason- 
 ers of our day, the late Sir Cornewall Lewis, " that in 
 every sort of government the sovereign power must be 
 legally unlimited ; and that every government must be 
 conducted by men." To surrender this fundamental 
 principle, would be to exchange the progressive politi- 
 cal development of Europe for the torpor of Mohamme- 
 dan rule. To have first recognized this principle con- 
 stitutes our distinction as a nation. 
 
 We have, in fact, suflFered our instinct of nationality 
 to become weakened by fixing our eyes too much on 
 
Oration. 17 
 
 the written constitution. The government has veiled 
 the older and grander proportions of the State. Even 
 Mr. Motley, in his letter to the London Times, at the 
 beginning of our civil strife, committed the strange 
 error of asserting "that the constitution of 1787 made 
 us a nation." It did, it could do, no such thing. It was 
 the nation that made the constitution. In the words 
 of the preamble it asserts its imperial parentage. 
 
 By thus looking at the government rather than the 
 State, so many of our most sagacious public men were 
 betrayed into the admission that prior to the adoption 
 of the constitution, the States were sovereign. This 
 was the view of Mr. Jefferson, and was even conceded 
 by Mr. Webster. From this view the doctrine of seces- 
 sion followed as a logical conclusion. 
 
 For when were the Statae thus severally possessed 
 of sovereign power? Not during the colonial period, 
 for then, as they themselves repeatedly asserted, they 
 were mere dependencies of the British Crown. Not 
 when Independence was first declared, for that declara- 
 tion was a joint act, the assertion of a collective sov- 
 ereignty^ Not as separate States, but as an organized 
 political unity, they proceeded to raise armies, to carrj^ 
 on war, to conclude treaties. Never were they recog- 
 nized by any foreign power as endowed with other than 
 collective sovereignty. The sovereignty wrested from 
 the British Crown passed to the United States, nor by 
 any act, nor by any declaration, nor by any pretence 
 whatever, did any one of those States ever claim a sepa- 
 rate and individual sovereignty. What though in the 
 din of arms they became so oblivious of their national- 
 ity as to accept the erroneous expression of it in the 
 Articles of Confederation, shall an error of statement 
 
18 Oration. 
 
 vitiate an historic fact? Let the whole dangerous doc- 
 trine of original State sovereignty be forever dismissed 
 from the public mind. Let the words of an illustrious 
 South Carolinian statesman be forever engraved on all 
 our hearts : " The separate independence and individ- 
 ual sovereignty of the several States were never thought 
 of by the enlightened band of patriots who framed the 
 Declaration." 
 
 Our political system will never be secure till this no- 
 tion of original State sovereignty has been exploded. 
 No military triumphs can accomplish this. To be con- 
 quered is not to be convinced. But a few days ago, in 
 a New York paper, the defiant declaration was put 
 forth : "The South accepts the result in respect to its 
 present practical application, but that acceptance does 
 not imply any abandonment in thought of the principle 
 upon which the secession movement was founded." It 
 is but charity to think that by very many these views 
 are honestly maintained, and that soon as the fearful 
 ravages of war have been forgotten, they may reassert 
 their malignant and destructive sway over southei'n 
 sentiment ; and there is no way in Avhich these conclu- 
 sions can be logically met but by ceasing to regard the 
 nation as compounded of separate sovereignties. What 
 though we claim that in adopting the federal constitu- 
 tion, the States renounced forever their separate sov- 
 ereignty, and ceded it to the central power? A 
 party competent to do, is competent to undo, and 
 though sacred faith may be broken, and solemn pledges 
 may be violated by such a course, yet what prevents 
 that some miserable plea that the terms of the agree- 
 ment have been broken by the other members, shall be 
 held by one member to justify witlidrawing from it? 
 
RATION. 19 
 
 Do we say that the very terras of the agreement imply 
 that it shall be perpetual ? Is not every treaty of alli- 
 ance between nations in its terms perpetual ? Was not 
 the Holy Alliance meant to be perpetual ? But what 
 barrier have its solemn stipulations proved to the un- 
 scrupulous ambition of Bismarck ? 
 
 The denial of original State sovereignty is not the 
 denial of State rights. The rights of the States, within 
 their appropriate sphere are sacred and inviolable as 
 the rights of the federal government. Our political 
 system is exposed to no greater peril than is involved 
 in the tendency to centralization of power. But with 
 explicit division of powers there is no division of sov- 
 ereignty. The State entrusts its functions to a double 
 set of agents, but does not abdicate its indivisible and 
 inalienable supremacy. Between the federal and State 
 functions no issue of subordination can arise. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, misled by mere external resemblances, 
 fancied that he saw in the adjustment of our Federal 
 and State authority, a reproduction of the English sys- 
 tem of checks and balances, and he would have ren- 
 dered it more efficient by a dual executive, and by sub- 
 stituting concurrent for numerical majorities. It is 
 incomprehensible how so acute a mind should have so 
 wholly misconceived the genius of our system. The 
 British constitution, which bears in all its features the 
 marks of the lono; conflict of classes out of which it 
 sprung, and which, like the proud Keep of Windsor, to 
 which it has been compared, is a majestic monument of 
 feudal civilization, seeks in the balance of Three Estates 
 a safeguard against despotism. English liberties have 
 grown from this antagonism. But in our system such 
 antagonism can have no place. Our Federal and State 
 
20 On AT I OK. 
 
 governments do not represent riA'al classes or antag- 
 onistic interests. Our interests are homogeneous and 
 organic. The Federal and State governments are not 
 centripital and centrifugal forces; thej are happily 
 combined like the double motion of the earth on its 
 axis and in its orbit. 
 
 Keeping in mind this distinction between the State 
 and government, we can easily estimate the value of 
 that aphorism so often uttered, " that the Federal tie is 
 weak because it is artificial." Is not every form of 
 government artificial ? Can the term be applied to the 
 clauses of our Federal Constitution with any more pro- 
 priety than to the Reform Bill or the Bill of Rights, or 
 even to Magna Charta? Or, in what sense are the inter- 
 pretations of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, 
 which ultimately fix its meaning, any more artificial 
 than the long series of Pretorian Edicts which stamped 
 its peculiar character on Roman Law ? If the objec- 
 tion has any force, it applies to every form of govern- 
 ment that has ever existed since the legislation of 
 Solon, or the Laws of the Ten Tables. Sir James 
 Mackintosh gained great reputation once for saying that 
 " Constitutions are not made, but grow." The only 
 meaning of such a maxim is the simple and obvious 
 meaning that constitutions must be framed in accord- 
 ance with anterior facts. They are weak, not because 
 they are made, but because they are unwisely or 
 unjustly made. 
 
 A Federal system is more artificial than other sys- 
 tems only because it is the highest refinement of 
 human policy. It is more artificial only in the sense 
 that all consummate achievements of art, of literature, 
 of science, are more artificial ; only in the sense that 
 
Oration. 21 
 
 every matured product of intelligence and reason is 
 more artificial than the untutored instinct of the savage. 
 That a body politic, thus formed, should be less com- 
 pact than barbarian or feudal monarchies, would imply 
 that civilization itself is anarchy. 
 
 The Federal systems of ancient Greece were weak, 
 because their starting point was the separate sover- 
 eignty of cities ; oui's is strong because the collective 
 sovereignty of the American people is the broad basis 
 on which it rests. It might indeed be questioned 
 whether the term " federal " is strictly applicable to a 
 ' system that so radically departs from all former types. 
 In the more exact phrase of Mr. Phillimore, we may 
 call it a " composite state." It is, in every essential 
 aspect, a new experiment, the logical working out of 
 the most advanced political ideas of modern times. 
 
 The strange craft that shot so suddenly the other day 
 into the harbor of St. Johns, when the frightened watch- 
 man fled his post announcing that a sinking ship was 
 coming in, did not more truly embody an original idea, 
 than do our institutions. Like that watchman, most of 
 those abroad who, five years ago, had their gaze for the 
 first time fixed upon us by the breaking out of the civil 
 conflict, thought they saw a sinking ship. Like that 
 little craft which has safely ploughed its way across the 
 ocean, and now floats beside the frowning' batteries of 
 England, proclaiming, wherever she bears the Star 
 Spangled Banner, that a new age of naval warfare has 
 come, the Republic decried and denounced, with 
 prophets of evil predicting that she was fit only for 
 smooth seas and summer gales, across a darker and a 
 stormier sea has held her victorious course, and to- 
 day, in the pride of unbroken strength, and in the 
 
22 ■ ■ Oration. 
 
 majesty of perfect proportion, is proclaiming to the 
 world the triumph of an experiment that has no paral- 
 lel in the recorded history of mankind. 
 
 Fellow citizens, have I j)ainted too bright a picture ? 
 Is the ship of the Republic safe in port, or is she still 
 tossed on the open sea ? Let us not disguise the diffi- 
 culties of the hour. We have still a great work to doj 
 a work, in some respects, the most complex and diffi- 
 cult ever presented to any people ; but is it a work 
 beyond our strength ? If I had nothing in which to 
 put my trust but an individual, or a party, I might in- 
 deed be filled with apprehension. But ours is not the- 
 government of one man, nor the government of one 
 party. I look beyond the mere functionaries to the 
 source from which they derive their powers. I turn 
 from the petty jealousies and miserable bickerings of 
 the servant's hall, to the serene atmosphere of the pres- 
 ence chamber. I build my hopes, not on the tinkering 
 expedients of politicians, but in the sound, unerring in- 
 stincts of the sovereign people. 
 
 No nation that ever existed depended so little as does 
 ours upon its mere form of government. To my mind, 
 the crowning moment in our great conflict was not when 
 the first gun, fired on Sumter, was followed by the mag- 
 nificent ujirising of a great people ; when the whole 
 North burned with an enthusiasm that has had nothing 
 like it since the days of the Crusades ; but rather that 
 dark, that dreadful hour when, with the nation reeling 
 beneath the blow that smote its beloved chief, the great 
 duties of the State passed without a break or a jar to 
 the hands of his successor. That was the real triumph 
 of our institutions. I would have all other days, how- 
 ever glorious, be forgotten. I would have all other 
 
Oration. ' 23 
 
 pictures fade away, before I would part with that, for 
 not Gettysburg, nor Chattanooga, nor Petersburg, not 
 Hooker fighting above the clouds, nor Farragut lashed 
 to the mast-head, nor Sherman holding his mighty 
 march to the sea that roared and clapped its hands as 
 it sent to the sky the sheen of his terrible banners, 
 was such a spectacle as the calm self possession of that 
 hour. 
 
 With such proofs of national capacity, can we doubt, 
 fellow-citizens, that, with the blessing of Providence, 
 the great problem before us will be solved ? that the 
 nation, guided by the great principles which illuminate 
 her history, will march on without faltering, in the path 
 on which the light shineth more and more, that, swayed 
 by the increasing influences of a christian civilization, 
 recognizing no distinction of color or race, extending 
 to all, alike the blessings of liberty and the safeguards 
 of law, the land of our fathers, coming from her bap- 
 tism of blood, with the dove of divine peace resting 
 upon her, will merit the benediction: "This is the 
 people in which I am well pleased?" By the mercy of 
 God, while Europe rings with arms, we are left to pur- 
 sue the nobler arts of peace. Let the victories of war 
 be eclipsed by the grander victories of Justice and 
 Truth. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 01 1 836 755 8 
 
 1