In this imperfect survey, I have carefully avoided all reference to the
politics of the day and to particular topics, recently opened, which may
have undergone a great development even before these lines appear in
print on the other side of the Atlantic. Such reference would, without
any countervailing advantage, have lowered the strain of these remarks,
and would have complicated with painful considerations a statement
essentially impartial and general in its scope.
For the yet weightier reason of incompetency, I have avoided the topics
of chief present interest in America, including that proposal to tamper
with the true monetary creed which (as we should say) the Tempter lately
presented to the Nation in the Silver Bill. But I will not close this
paper without recording my conviction that the great acts, and the great
forbearances, which immediately followed the close of the Civil War form
a group which will ever be a noble object, in his political retrospect,
to the impartial historian; and that, proceeding as they did from the
free choice and conviction of the people, and founded as they were on
the very principles of which the multitude is supposed to be least
tolerant, they have, in doing honor to the United States, also rendered
a splendid service to the general cause of popular government throughout
the world.
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