Is it the fault of our
legislation here? If so, then it devolves upon us to correct it,
and we have the power. Is it the defect of the Federal
organization, of the fundamental law of our Union? I hold that
it is not. Our fathers, learning wisdom from the experiments of
Rome and of Greece--the one a consolidated republic, and the
other strictly a confederacy--and taught by the lessons of our
own experiment under the Confederation, came together to form a
Constitution for 'a more perfect union,' and, in my judgment,
made the best government which has ever been instituted by man.
It only requires that it should be carried out in the spirit in
which it was made, that the circumstances under which it was
made should continue, and no evil can arise under this
Government for which it has not an appropriate remedy. Then it
is outside of the Government--elsewhere than to its Constitution
or to its administration--that we are to look. Men must not
creep in the dust of partisan strife and seek to make points
against opponents as the means of evading or meeting the issues
before us. The fault is not in the form of the Government, nor
does the evil spring from the manner in which it has been
administered. Where, then, is it? It is that our fathers formed
a Government for a Union of friendly States; and though under it
the people have been prosperous beyond comparison with any other
whose career is recorded in the history of man, still that Union
of friendly States has changed its character, and sectional
hostility has been substituted for the fraternity in which the
Government was founded.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128