SEVENTH DAY.

_Wednesday, October 30, 1861._

The Court met at 11 o'clock A.M., when _Mr. Evarts_ resumed his

argument.

Gentlemen of the Jury: In resuming the course of my remarks, already

necessarily drawn to a very considerable length, I must recall to your

attention the point that I had reached when the Court adjourned. I was

speaking of this right of secession, as inconsistent with the frame,

the purpose, and the occasion upon which the General Government was

formed; and of the illustration invented by my learned friend, and so

improbable in its circumstances, of the position of the United States

and one of the States of the Union, that could bring into play and

justify this resort to armed opposition. I had said what I had to say,

for the most part, as to the absurdity and improbability of the case

supposed, and the inadequacy, the worthlessness, the chimerical nature

of the remedy proposed. Now, you will observe that, in the case

supposed, the blockade of New York was to be without law, without

authority, upon the mere capricious pretence of the President--a

pretence so absurd that it could not stand the inspection of the people

for a moment. What is the use of a pretence unless it is a cover for

the act which it is intended to cloak? In such a case, the only proper,

peaceful course would be to raise the question, which might be raised

judicially, by attempting, in a peaceful manner, to pass the blockade,

and throw the consequences upon the subordinate officers who attempted

to execute the mere usurpation of the President, and, following the

declaration of the Divine writings, that "wisdom is better than weapons

of war," wait until the question could be disposed of under the

Constitution of the United States. For you will observe that, in the

case supposed, there is no threat to the integrity, no threat to the

authority, no threat to the existence of the State Government, or its

Constitution; but an impeding of the trade or interests of the people

of this city, and of the residents of all parts of the country

interested in the commerce of New York. That port is not the port of

New York alone. It is the port of the United States of America, and all

the communities in the Western country, who derive their supplies of

foreign commodities through our internal navigation, when commerce has

introduced them into this port, are just as much affected--just as much

injured and oppressed--by this blockade of our great port and emporium,

as are the people of the State of New York. So that, so far from its

being a collision between the Government of the State of New York and

the Government of the United States, it is a violent oppression, by

usurpation--exposing to the highest penalties of the law the magistrate

who has attempted it--exercised upon the people of the United States

wherever residing, in the far West, in the surrounding States, in the

whole country, who are interested in the maintenance of the commerce of

this port. I need not say that the action of our institutions provides

a ready solution for this difficulty. Two or three weeks must bring to

the notice of every one the frivolity of the pretence of the Executive,

that there was a threat of armed attack by a foreign nation. But if two

or three weeks should bring the evidence that this was not an idle

fear, and that, by information conveyed to the Government, this threat

was substantial, and was followed by its attempted execution,--why,

then, how absurd the proposition that, under the opinion of the State

of New York, that this was but an idle pretext, for purposes of

oppression, the State should fly into arms against the power exercised

to protect the city from foreign attack! The working of our affairs,

which brings around the session of Congress at a time fixed by law--not

at all determinable by the will of the President--exposes him to the

grand inquest of the people, which sits upon his crime, and, by his

presentation and trial before the great Court of Impeachment, in the

course of one week--nay, in scarcely more than one day after its coming

into session--both stamps this act as an usurpation, and dispossesses

the magistrate who has violated the Constitution. And yet, rather than

wait for this assertion of the power of the Constitution peacefully to

depose the usurping magistrate, my friend must resort to this violent

intervention of armed collision, that would keep us--in theory, at

least--constantly maintaining our rights by the mere method of force,

and would make of this Government--at the same time that they eulogize

the founders of it, as the best and wisest of men--but an organization

of armed hostilities, and its framers only the architects of an

ever-impending ruin!

My learned friend, Mr. Brady, has asked my attention to the solution of

a case wherein he thinks the State Government might be called upon to

protect the rights of its citizens against the operation of an Act of

Congress, by proposing this question: Suppose Congress should require

that all the expenses of this great war, as we call it, should be paid

by the State of New York,--what should we do in that case? Nothing but

hostilities are a solution for that case, it is suggested. Now, I would

freely say to my learned friend, Mr. Brady, that if the General

Government, by its law, should impose the whole taxation of the war

upon the State of New York, I should advise the State of New York, or

any citizen in it, not to pay the taxes. That is the end of the matter.

And I would like to know if there is any warlike process by which the

General Government of the United States exacts its tribute of taxation,

that could impose the whole amount on New York? As the process of

taxation goes on, it is distributed through different channels, and

presents itself as an actual and effective process, from the

tax-gatherer to the tax-payer: "Give me so many dollars." And the

tax-payer says: "There is no law for it, and I will not do it." Then

the process of collection raises for consideration this

inquiry--whether the tax is according to law, and according to the

constitutional law of the United States of America. And this tribunal,

formed to decide such questions--formed to settle principles in single

cases, that shall protect against hostilities these great

communities--disposes of the question. If the law is constitutional,

then the tax is to be paid--if unconstitutional, then the tax is not

collectable; and the question is settled. But my learned friends, in

their suggestions of what is a possible state of law that may arise in

this country, forget the great distinction between our situation under

the Federal Government and our situation as Colonies under the

authority of the King and Parliament of England. It is the distinction

between not being represented and being represented.

Why, my learned friends, in order to get the basis of a possible

suggestion of contrariety of duty and of interest between the

Government of the United States and the people in these States, must

overlook, and do overlook the fact that there is not a functionary in

the Federal Government, from the President down to the Houses of

Congress, that does not derive his authority from the people, not of

one State, not of any number of States, but of all the States. And thus

standing, they are guardians and custodians, in their own interests--in

their own knowledge of the interests of their own people--in their own

knowledge that their place in the protection, power, and authority of

the Government of the United States, proceeds by the favor and the

approval of the local community in which they reside. So far,

therefore, from anything in the arrangement or the working of these

political systems being such as to make the Representatives or Senators

that compose Congress the masters or the enemies of the local

population of the States from which they respectively come, they come

there under the authority of the local population which they represent,

dependent upon it for their place and continuance, and not on the

Federal Government.

Away, then, with the notion, so foreign to our actual, constituted

Government, that this Government of the United States of America is a

Government that is extended over these States, with an origin, a power,

a support independent of them, and that it contains in itself an

arrangement, a principle, a composition that can by possibility excite

or sustain these hostilities! Why, every act of Congress must govern

the whole Union. Every tax must, to be constitutional, be extended over

the whole Union, and according to a fixed ratio of distribution between

the States, established by the Constitution itself. Now, therefore,

when any particular interest, any particular occasion, any supposed

necessity, any political motive, suggests a departure, on the part of

the General Government, from a necessary adherence to this principle of

the Constitution, you will perceive that not only are the

Representatives and Senators who come from the State against which this

exercise of power is attempted, interested to oppose, in their places

in Congress, the violation of the Constitution, but the Representatives

and the Senators from every other State, in support of the rights of

the local communities in which they reside, have the same interest and

the same duty, and may be practically relied upon to exercise the same

right, and authority, and opposition, in protection of their

communities, against an application of the same principle, or an

obedience to the same usurpation, on subsequent occasions, in reference

to other questions that may arise. Therefore, my learned friends, when

they are talking to you, theoretically or practically, about the

opposition that may arise between co-ordinate and independent

sovereignties, and would make the glorious Constitution of this Federal

Government an instance of misshapen, and disjointed, and impractical

inconsistencies, forget that the great basis of both of them rests in

the people, and in the same people--equally interested, equally

powerful, to restrain and to continue the movements of each, within the

separate, constitutional rights of each. Now, unquestionably, in vast

communities, with great interests, diverse and various, opinions may

vary, and honest sentiments may produce the enactment of laws of

Congress, which equally honest sentiments, on the part of local

communities, expressed through the action of State legislation, may

regard as inconsistent with the Government and the Constitution of the

United States, and with the rights of the States. But, for these

purposes, for these occasions, an ample and complete theoretical and

practical protection of the rights of all is found, in this absolute

identity of the interests of the people and of their authority in both

the form and the structure of their complex Government, and in the

means provided by the Constitution itself for testing every question

that touches the right, the interest, the liberty, the property, the

freedom of any citizen, in all and any of these communities, before the

Supreme Court of the United States. Let us not be drawn into any of

these shadowy propositions, that the whole people may be oppressed, and

not a single individual in it be deprived of any personal right.

Whenever the liberty of the citizen is abridged in respect to any

personal right, the counsel concede that the Courts are open to him;

and that is the theory, the wisdom, and the practical success of the

American Constitution.

Now, gentlemen of the Jury, but one word more on this speculative right

of secession. It is founded, if at all, upon the theory, that the

States, having been, anterior to the formation of the Constitution,

independent sovereignties, are, themselves, the creators, and that the

Constitution is the creature proceeding from their power. I have said

all I have to say about either the fact, or the result of the fact, if

it be one, of the existence of these antecedent, complete national

sovereignties on the part of any of the original States. But, will my

learned friends tell me how this theory of theirs, in respect to the

original thirteen States, has any application to the States, now quite

outnumbering the original thirteen, which have, since the Constitution

was formed, entered into the Government of this our territory, this our

people? Out of thirty-four States, eleven have derived their existence,

their permission to exist, their territory, their power to make a

Constitution, from the General Government itself, out of whose

territory--either acquired originally by the wealth or conquest of the

Federal Government, or derived directly or indirectly through the

cession or partition or separation of the original Colonies--they have

sprung into existence. Of these eleven allied and confederate States,

but four came from the stock of the original thirteen, and seven

derived their whole power and authority from the permission of the

Constitution of the United States, and have sprung into existence, with

the breath of their lives breathed into them through the Federal

Government. When the State of Louisiana talks of its right to secede by

reason of its sovereignty, by reason of its being one of the creators

of the Federal Government, and of the Federal Constitution--one of the

actors in the principles of the American Revolution, and in the

conquest of our liberties from the English power--we may well lift our

hands in surprise at the arrogance of such a suggestion. Why, what was

Louisiana, in all her territory, at the time of the great transaction

of the Federal Revolution, and for a long time afterwards, but a

province of Spain, first, and afterwards of France? How did her

territory--the land upon which her population and her property

rest--come to be a part of our territory, and to give support to a

State government, and to State interests? Why, by its acquisition,

under the wise policy of Mr. Jefferson, early in this century, upon the

opportunity offered, by the necessity or policy of the Emperor

Napoleon, for its purchase, by money, as you would buy a ship, or a

strip of land to build a fort on. Coming thus to the United States, by

its purchase, how did Louisiana come to be set apart, carved out of the

immense territory comprehended under the name of Louisiana, but by

lines of division and concession of power, proceeding from the

Government of the United States? And why did we purchase it? We

purchased it preliminarily, not so much to seize the opportunity for

excluding from a foothold on this Continent a great foreign Power,

which, although its territory here was waste and uninhabited, had the

legal right to fill it, and might, in the course of time, fill it, with

a population hostile in interests to our own,--not so much for this

remote contingency, as to meet the actual and pressing necessity, on

the part of the population that was beginning to fill up the left or

eastern bank of the Mississippi, from its source to near its mouth,

that they should have the mouth of the Mississippi also within their

territory, governed by the same laws and under the same Government. And

now, forsooth, the money and the policy of the United States having

acquired this territory, and conceded the political rights contained in

the Constitution of Louisiana, we are to justify the secession of the

territory of Louisiana, carrying the mouth of the Mississippi with her,

on the theory that she was one of the original sovereignties, and one

of the creators of the Constitution of the United States! Well,

gentlemen, how are our learned friends to escape from this dilemma? Are

they to say that our constituted Government, complex, composed of State

and of Federal power, has two sets of State and Federal relations

within it, to wit, that which existed between the General Government

and the thirteen sovereign, original States, and that which exists

between the Federal Government and the other twenty-one States of the

Union? Is it to follow, from this severance, that these original

Colonies, declaring their independence--South Carolina, North Carolina,

Virginia and Georgia--are to draw back to themselves the portions of

their original territory that have since, under the authority of the

Constitution, been formed into separate communities? Our Constitution

was made by and between the States, and the people of the States--not

for themselves alone--not limited to existing territory, and arranged

State and Provincial Governments--but made as a Government, and made

with principles in respect to Government that should admit of its

extension by purchase, by conquest, by all the means that could bring

accretion to a people in territory and in strength, and that should be,

in its principles, a form of Government applicable to and sufficient

for the old and the new States, and the old and the new population. I

need but refer to the later instances, where, by purchase, we acquired

Florida, also one of the seceded States, and where, by our armies, we

gained the western coast of the Pacific. Are these the relations into

which the power, and blood, and treasure of this Government bring it,

in respect to the new communities and new States which, under its

protection, and from its conceded power, have derived their very

existence? Why, gentlemen, our Government is said, by those who

complain of it, or who expose what they regard as its difficulties, to

have one element of weakness in it, to wit, the possibility of discord

between the State and the Federal authorities. But, if you adopt the

principle, that there is one set of rules, one set of rights, between

the Federal Government and the original States that formed the Union,

and another set of rules between the Federal Government and the new

States, I would like to know what becomes of the provision of the

Constitution, that the new States may be admitted on the same footing

with the old? What becomes of the harmony and accord among the local

Governments of this great nation, which we call State Governments, if

there be this superiority, in every political sense, on the part of the

old States, and this absolute inferiority and subjection on the part of

the new?

And now, gentlemen, having done with this doctrine of secession, as

utterly inconsistent with the theory of our Government, and utterly

unimportant, as a practical right, for any supposable or even

imaginable case that may be suggested, I come to consider the question

of the right of revolution. I have shown to you upon what principles,

and upon what substantial question, between being subjects as slaves,

or being participants in the British Government, our Colonies attempted

and achieved their independence. As I have said to you, a very brief

experience showed that they needed, to meet the exigencies of their

situation, the establishment of a Government that should be in

accordance with the wishes and spirit of the people, in regard of

freedom, and yet should be of such strength, and such unity, as would

admit of prosperity being enjoyed under it, and of its name and power

being established among the nations of the earth. Now, without going

into the theories of Government, and of the rights of the people, and

of the rights of the rulers, to any great extent, we all know that

there has been every variety of experiment tried, in the course of

human affairs, between the great extreme alluded to by my learned

friend (Mr. Brady) of the slavery of Egyptians to their king--the

extreme instance of an entire population scarcely lifted above the

brutes in their absolute subjection to the tyranny of a ruler, so that

the life, and the soul, and the sweat, and the blood of a whole

generation of men are consumed in the task of building a mausoleum as

the grave of a king--and the later efforts of our race, culminating in

the happy success of our own form of Government, to establish, on

foundations where liberty and law find equal support, the principle of

Government, that Government is by, and for, and from all the

people--that the rulers, instead of being their masters and their

owners, are their agents and their servants--and that the greatest good

of the greatest number is the plain, practical and equal rule which, by

gift from our Creator, we enjoy.

Now this, you will observe, is a question which readily receives our

acceptance. But the great problem in reference to the freedom of a

people, in the establishment of their Government, presents itself in

this wise: The people, in order to maintain their freedom, must be

masters of their Government, so that the Government may not be too

strong, in its arrangement of power, to overmaster the people; but yet,

the Government must be strong enough to maintain and protect the

independence of the nation against the aggressions, the usurpations,

and the oppressions of foreign nations. Here you have a difficulty

raised at once. You expose either the freedom of the nation, by making

the Government too strong for the preservation of individual

independence, or you expose its existence, by making it too weak to

maintain itself against the passions, interests and power of

neighboring nations. If you have a large nation--counting its

population by many millions, and the circumference of its territory by

thousands of miles--how can you arrange the strength of Government, so

that it shall not, in the interests of human passions, grow too strong

for the liberties of the people? And if, abandoning in despair that

effort and that hope, you circumscribe the limits of your territory,

and reduce your population within a narrow range, how can you have a

Government and a nation strong enough to maintain itself in the

contests of the great family of nations, impelled and urged by

interests and passions?

Here is the first peril, which has never been successfully met and

disposed of in any of the forms of Government that have been known in

the history of mankind, until, at least, our solution of it was

attempted, and unless it has succeeded and can maintain itself. But,

again, this business of self-government by a people has but one

practical and sensible spirit and object. The object of free Government

is, that the people, as individuals, may, with security, pursue their

own happiness. We do not tolerate the theory that all the people

constituting the nation are absorbed into the national growth and life.

The reason why we want a free Government is, that we may be happy under

it, and pursue our own activities according to our nature and our

faculties. But, you will see, at once, that it is of the essence of

being able to pursue our own interests under the Government under which

we live, that we can do so according to our own notions of what they

are, or the notions of those who are intelligently informed of,

participate in, and sympathize with, those interests. Therefore, it

seems necessary that all of the every-day rights of property, of social

arrangements, of marriage, of contracts--everything that makes up the

life of a social community--shall be under the control, not of a remote

or distant authority, but of one that is limited to, and derives its

ideas and principles from, a local community.

Now, how can this be in a large nation--in a nation of thirty millions,

distributed over a zone of the earth? How are we to get along in New

York, and how are others to get along in South Carolina, and others in

New England, in the every-day arrangements that proceed from

Government, and affect the prosperity, the freedom, the independence,

the satisfaction of the community with the condition in which it lives?

How can we get along, if all these minute and every-day arrangements

are to proceed from a Government which has to deal with the diverse

opinions, the diverse sentiments, the diverse interests, of so

extensive a nation? But if, fleeing from this peril, you say that you

may reduce your nation, you fall into another difficulty. The advanced

civilization of the present day requires, for our commercial activity,

for our enjoyment of the comforts and luxuries of life, that the whole

globe shall be ransacked, and that the power of the nation which we

recognize as our superior shall be able to protect our citizens in

their enterprises, in their activities, in their objects, all over the

world. How can a little nation, made up of Massachusetts, or made up of

South Carolina, have a flag and a power which can protect its commerce

in the East Indies and in the Southern Ocean? Again--we find that

nations, unless they are separated by wide barriers, necessarily, in

the course of human affairs, come into collision; and, as I have shown

to you, the only arbitrament for their settlement is war. But war is a

scourge--an unmitigated scourge--so long as it lasts, and in itself

considered. But for objects which make it meritorious and useful, it is

a scourge never to be tolerated. It puts in abeyance all individual

rights, interests, and schemes, until the great controversy is settled.

If, then, we are a small nation, surrounded on all sides by other

nations, with no natural barriers, with competing interests, with

occasions of strife and collision on all sides, how can we escape war,

as a necessary result of that miserable situation? But war strengthens

the power of Government, weakens the power of the individual, and

establishes maxims and creates forces, that go to increase the weight

and the power of Government, and to weaken the rights of the people.

Then, we see that, to escape war, we must either establish a great

nation, which occupies an extent of territory, and has a fund of power

sufficient to protect itself against border strifes, and against the

ambition, the envy, the hatred of neighbors; or else one which, being

small, is exposed to war from abroad to subjugate it, or to the greater

peril to its own liberties, of war made by its own Government, thus

establishing principles and introducing interests which are

inconsistent with liberty.

I have thus ventured, gentlemen, to lay before you some of these

general principles, because, in the course of the arguments of my

learned friends, as well as in many of the discussions before the

public mind, it seems to be considered that the ties, the affections

and the interests, which oblige us to the maintenance of this

Government of ours, find their support and proper strength and

nourishment only in the sentiments of patriotism and duty, because it

happens to be our own Government; and that, when the considerations of

force or of feeling which bring a people to submit to a surrender of

their Government, or to a successful conquest of a part of their

territory, or to a wresting of a part of their people from the control

of the Government, shall be brought to bear upon us, we shall be, in

our loss and our surrender, only suffering what other nations have been

called upon to lose and to surrender, and that it will be but a change

in the actual condition of the country and its territory. But you will

perceive that, by the superior fortune which attended our introduction

into the family of nations, and by the great wisdom, forecast, and

courage of our ancestors, we avoided, at the outset, all the

difficulties between a large territory and a numerous population on the

one hand, and a small territory and a reduced population on the other

hand, and all those opposing dangers of the Government being either too

weak to protect the nation, or too strong, and thus oppressive of the

people, by a distribution of powers and authorities, novel in the

affairs of men, dependent on experiment, and to receive its final fate

as the result of that experiment. We went on this view--that these

feeble Colonies had not, each in itself, the life and strength of a

nation; and, yet, these feeble Colonies, and their poor and sparse

population, were nourished on a love of liberty and self-government.

These sentiments had carried them through a successful war against one

of the great powers of the earth. They were not to surrender that for

which they had been fighting to any scheme, to any theory of a great,

consolidated nation, the Government of which should subdue the people

and re-introduce the old fashion in human affairs--that the people were

made for the rulers, and not the rulers by and for the people. They

undertook to meet, they did meet, this difficult dilemma in the

constitution of Government, by separating the great fund of power, and

reposing it in two distinct organizations. They reserved to the local

communities the control of their domestic affairs, and attributed the

maintenance and preservation of them to the State governments. They

undertook to collect and deposit, under the form of a written

Constitution, with the general Government, all those larger and common

interests which enter into the conception and practical establishment

of a distinct nation among the nations of the earth, and determined

that they would have a central power which should be adequate, by

drawing its resources from the patriotism, from the duty, from the

wealth, from the numbers, of a great nation, to represent them in peace

and in war,--a nation that could protect the interests, encourage the

activities, and maintain the development of its people, in spite of the

opposing interests or the envious or hostile attacks of any nation.

They determined that this great Government, thus furnished with this

range of authority and this extent of power, should not have anything

to do with the every-day institutions, operations and social

arrangements of the community into which the vast population and

territory of the nation were distributed. They determined that the

people of Massachusetts, the people of New York, and the people of

South Carolina, each of them, should have their own laws about

agriculture, about internal trade, about marriage, about

apprenticeship, about slavery, about religion, about schools, about all

the every-day pulsations of individual life and happiness, controlled

by communities that moved with the same pulsations, obeyed the same

instincts, and were animated by the same purposes. And, as this latter

class of authority contains in itself the principal means of oppression

by a Government, and is the principal point where oppression is to be

feared by a people, they had thus robbed the new system of all the

dangers which attend the too extensive powers of a Government. They

divided the fund of power, to prevent a great concentration and a great

consolidation of the army of magistrates and officers of the law and of

the Government which would have been combined by a united and

consolidated authority, having jurisdiction of all the purposes of

Government, of all the interests of citizens, and of the entire

population and entire territory in these respects. They thus made a

Government, complex in its arrangements, which met those opposing

difficulties, inherent in human affairs, that make the distinction

between free Governments and oppressive Governments. They preserved the

people in their enjoyment and control of all the local matters entering

into their every-day life, and yet gave them an establishment,

springing from the same interests and controlled by the same people,

which has sustained and protected us in our relations to the family of

nations on the high seas and in the remote corners of the world.

Now, this is the scheme, and this is the purpose, with which this

Government was formed; and you will observe that there is contained in

it this separation, and this distribution. And our learned friends, who

have argued before you respecting this theory, and this arrangement and

practice of the power of a Government, as inconsistent with the

interests and the freedom of the people, have substantially said to you

that it was a whimsical contrivance, that it was an impossible

arrangement of inconsistent principles, and that we must go back to a

simple Government composed of one of the States, or of a similar

arrangement of territory and people, which would make each of us a weak

and contemptible power in the family of nations--or we must go back to

the old consolidation of power, such as is represented by the frame of

France or England in its Government, or, more distinctly, more

absolutely, and more likely to be the case, for so vast a territory and

so extensive a population as ours, to the simple notion of Russian

Autocracy.

That, then, being the object, and that the character, of our

institutions, and this right of secession not being provided for, or

imagined, or tolerated in the scheme, let us look at the right of

revolution, as justifying an attempt to overthrow the Government; and

let us look at the occasions of revolution, which are pretended here,

as giving a support, before the world, in the forum of conscience, and

in the judgment of mankind, for the exercise of that right.

And first, let me ask you whether, in all the citations from the great

men of the Revolution, and in the later stages of our history, any

opinion has been cited which has condemned this scheme, as unsuitable

and insufficient for the freedom and happiness of the people, if it can

be successful? I think not. The whole history of the country is full of

records of the approval, of the support, of the admiration, of the

reverent language which our people at large, and the great leaders of

public opinion--the great statesmen of the country--have spoken of this

system of Government. Let me ask your attention to but two encomiums

upon it, as represented by that central idea of a great nation, and yet

a divided and local administration of popular interests--to wit, one in

the first stage of its adoption, before its ratification by the people

was complete; and the other, a speech made at the very eve of, if not

in the very smoke of, this hostile dissolution of it.

Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, who had been one of the delegates from

that State in the National Convention, and had co-operated with the

Northern statesmen, and with the great men of Virginia, in forming the

Government as it was, in urging on the Convention of South Carolina the

adoption of the Constitution, and its ratification, said:

"To the Union we will look up as the temple of our freedom,--a

temple founded in the affections and supported by the virtue of

the people. Here we will pour out our gratitude to the Author of

all good, for suffering us to participate in the rights of a

people who govern themselves. Is there, at this moment, a nation

on the earth which enjoys this right, where the true principles of

representation are understood and practised, and where all

authority flows from, and returns at stated periods to, the

people? I answer, there is not. Can a Government be said to be

free where those do not exist? It cannot. On what depends the

enjoyment of those rare, inestimable rights? On the firmness and

on the power of the Union to protect and defend them."

Had we anything from that great patriot and statesman of this right of

secession, or independence of a State, as an important or a useful

element in securing these rare, these unheard of, these inestimable

privileges of Government, which the Author of all good had suffered the

people of South Carolina to participate in? No--they depended "on the

firmness and on the power of the Union to protect and defend them." Mr.

Pinckney goes on to say:

"To the philosophic mind, how new and awful an instance do the

United States at present exhibit to the people of the world! They

exhibit, sir, the first instance of a people who, being thus

dissatisfied with their Government, unattacked by a foreign force

and undisturbed by domestic uneasiness, coolly and deliberately

resort to the virtue and good sense of the country for a correction

of their public errors."

That is, for the abandonment of the weakness and the danger of the

imperfect Confederation, and the adoption of the constitutional and

formal establishment of Federal power. Mr. Pinckney goes on to say:

"It must be obvious that, without a superintending Government, it

is impossible the liberties of this country can long be secure.

Single and unconnected, how weak and contemptible are the largest

of our States! how unable to protect themselves from external or

domestic insult! how incompetent, to national purposes, would even

the present Union be! how liable to intestine war and confusion!

how little able to secure the blessings of peace! Let us,

therefore, be careful in strengthening the Union. Let us remember

we are bounded by vigilant and attentive neighbors"--(and now

Europe is within ten days, and they are near neighbors)--"who view

with a jealous eye our rights to empire."

Pursuing my design of limiting my citations of the opinions of public

men to those who have received honor from, and conferred honor on, that

portion of our country and those of our countrymen now engaged in this

strife with the General Government, let me ask your attention to a

speech delivered by Mr. Stephens, now the Vice-President of the

so-called Confederate States, on the very eve of, and protesting

against, this effort to dissolve the Union. I read from page 220 and

subsequent pages of the documents that have been the subject of

reference heretofore:

"The first question that presents itself"--(says Mr. Stephens to

the assembled Legislature of Georgia, of which he was not a member,

but which, as an eminent and leading public man, he had been

invited to address)--"is, shall the people of the South secede from

the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the

Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, _I tell you

frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they

ought_. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally

elected to that high office, is sufficient cause for any State to

separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in

maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of

resistance to the Government--to withdraw from it because a man has

been constitutionally elected--puts us in the wrong. We are pledged

to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it.

"But it is said Mr. Lincoln's policy and principles are against the

Constitution, and that if he carries them out it will be

destructive of our rights. Let us not anticipate a threatened evil.

If he violates the Constitution, then will come our time to act. Do

not let us break it because, forsooth, he may. If he does, that is

the time for us to strike. * * * My countrymen, I am not of those

who believe this Union has been a curse up to this time. True

men--men of integrity--entertain different views from me on this

subject. I do not question their right to do so; I would not impugn

their motives in so doing. Nor will I undertake to say that this

Government of our fathers is perfect. There is nothing perfect in

this world, of a human origin. Nothing connected with human nature,

from man himself to any of his works. You may select the wisest and

best men for your Judges, and yet how many defects are there in the

administration of justice? You may select the wisest and best men

for your legislators, and yet how many defects are apparent in your

laws? And it is so in our Government.

"But that this Government of our fathers, with all its defects,

comes nearer the objects of all good Governments than any on the

face of the earth, is my settled conviction. Contrast it now with

any on the face of the earth." ["England," said Mr. Toombs.]

"England, my friend says. Well, that is the next best, I grant; but

I think we have improved upon England. Statesmen tried their

apprentice hand on the Government of England, and then ours was

made. Ours sprung from that, avoiding many of its defects, taking

most of the good and leaving out many of its errors, and, from the

whole, constructing and building up this model Republic--the best

which the history of the world gives any account of.

"Compare, my friends, this Government with that of Spain, Mexico,

the South American Republics, Germany, Ireland--are there any sons

of that down-trodden nation here to-night?--Prussia, or, if you

travel further east, to Turkey or China. Where will you go,

following the sun in his circuit round our globe, to find a

Government that better protects the liberties of its people, and

secures to them the blessings we enjoy? I think that one of the

evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, an exuberance of the

priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful. * * * * *

"When I look around and see our prosperity in every

thing--agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of

education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and

our colleges--I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we

can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest,

remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity

to--let us not too readily yield to this temptation--do so. Our

first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not

without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led

to believe that their condition would be bettered--that their eyes

would be opened--and that they would become as gods. They in an

evil hour yielded. Instead of becoming gods, they only saw their

own nakedness.

"I look upon this country, with our institutions, as the Eden of

the world, the paradise of the Universe. It may be that out of it

we may become greater and more prosperous, but I am candid and

sincere in telling you that I fear if we rashly evince passion,

and, without sufficient cause, shall take that step, that instead

of becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous and happy--instead

of becoming gods--we will become demons, and, at no distant day,

commence cutting one another's throats."

Still speaking of our Government, he says:

"Thus far, it is a noble example, worthy of imitation. The

gentleman (Mr. Cobb) the other night said it had proven a failure.

A failure in what? In growth? Look at our expanse in national

power. Look at our population and increase in all that makes a

people great. A failure? Why, we are the admiration of the

civilized world, and present the brightest hopes of mankind.

"Some of our public men have failed in their aspirations; that is

true, and from that comes a great part of our troubles.

"No, there is no failure of this Government yet. We have made great

advancement under the Constitution, and I cannot but hope that we

shall advance higher still. Let us be true to our cause."

Now, wherein is it that this Government deserves these encomiums,

which come from the intelligent and profound wisdom of statesmen, and

gush spontaneously from the unlearned hearts of the masses of the

people? Why, it is precisely in this point, of its not being a

consolidated Government, and of its not being a narrow, and feeble,

and weak community and Government. Indeed, I may be permitted to say

that I once heard, from the lips of Mr. Calhoun himself, this

recognition, both of the good fortune of this country in possessing

such a Government, and of the principal sources to which the gratitude

of a nation should attribute that good fortune. I heard him once say,

that it was to the wisdom, in the great Convention, of the delegates

from the State of Connecticut, and of Judge Patterson, a delegate from

the State of New Jersey, that we owed the fact that this Government

was what it was, the best Government in the world, a confederated

Government, and not what it would have been--and, apparently, would

have been but for those statesmen--the worst Government in the

world--a consolidated Government. These statesmen, he said, were wiser

for the South than the South was for herself.

I need not say to you, gentlemen that, if all this encomium on the

great fabric of our Government is brought to naught, and is made

nonsense by the proposition that, although thus praised and thus

admired, it contains within itself the principle, the right, the duty

of being torn to pieces, whenever a fragment of its people shall be

discontented and desire its destruction, then all this encomium comes

but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; and the glory of our

ancestors, Washington, and Madison, and Jefferson, and Adams--the

glory of their successors, Webster, and Clay, and Wright, and even

Calhoun--for he was no votary of this nonsense of secession--passes

away, and their fame grows visibly paler, and the watchful eye of the

English monarchy looks on for the bitter fruits to be reaped by us for

our own destruction, and as an example to the world--the bitter fruits

of the principle of revolution and of the right of self-government

which we dared to assert against her perfect control. Pointing to our

exhibition of an actual concourse of armies, she will say--"It is in

the dragon's teeth, in the right of rebellion against the monarchy of

England, that these armed hosts have found their seed and sprung up on

your soil."

Now, gentlemen, such is our Government, such is its beneficence, such

is its adaptation, and such are its successes. Look at its successes.

Not three-quarters of a century have passed away since the adoption of

its Constitution, and now it rules over a territory that extends from

the Atlantic to the Pacific. It fills the wide belt of the earth's

surface that is bounded by the provinces of England on the North, and

by the crumbling, and weak, and contemptible Governments or no

Governments that shake the frame of Mexico on the South. Have Nature

and Providence left us without resources to hold together social

unity, notwithstanding the vast expanse of the earth's surface which

our population has traversed and possessed? No. Keeping pace with our

wants in that regard, the rapid locomotion of steam on the ocean, and

on our rivers and lakes, and on the iron roads that bind the country

together, and the instantaneous electric communication of thought,

which fills with the same facts, and with the same news, and with the

same sentiments, at the same moment, a great, enlightened, and

intelligent people, have overcome all the resistance and all the

dangers which might be attributed to natural obstructions. Even now,

while this trial proceeds, San Francisco and New York, Boston and

Portland, and the still farther East, communicate together as by a

flash of lightning--indeed, it may be said, making an electric flash

farther across the earth's surface, and intelligible too, to man, than

ever, in the natural phenomena of the heavens, the lightning displayed

itself. No--the same Author of all good, to whom Pinckney avowed his

gratitude, has been our friend and our protector, and has removed,

step by step, every impediment to our expansion which the laws of

nature and of space had been supposed to interpose. No, no--neither in

the patriotism nor in the wisdom of our fathers was there any defect;

nor shall we find, in the disposition and purposes of Divine

Providence, as we can see them, any excuse or any aid for the

destruction of this magnificent system of empire. No--it is in

ourselves, in our own time and in our own generation, in our own

failing powers and failing duties, that the crash and ruin of this

magnificent fabric, and the blasting of the future hopes of mankind,

is to find its cause and its execution.

I have shown you, gentlemen, how, when the usurpations of the British

Parliament, striking at the vital point of the independence of this

country, had raised for consideration and determination, by a brave

and free people, the question of their destiny, our fathers dealt with

it. My learned friends, in various forms, have spoken poetically,

logically and practically about all that course of proceedings that

has been going on in this country, as finding a complete parallelism,

support, and justification in the course of the American Revolution;

and a passage in the Declaration of Independence has been read to you

as calculated to show that, on a mere theoretical opinion of the right

of a people to govern themselves, any portion of that people are at

liberty, as well against a good Government as against a bad one, to

establish a bad Government as well as overthrow a bad Government--have

the right to do as they please, and, I suppose, to force all the rest

of the world and all the rest of the nation to just such a fate as

their doing as they please may bring with it.

Let us see how this Declaration of Independence, called by the great

forensic orator, Mr. Choate, "a passionate and eloquent manifesto,"

and stigmatized as containing "glittering generalities"--let us see, I

say, how sober, how discreet, how cautious it is in the presentation

of this right, even of revolution. I read what, both in the newspapers

and in political discussions, as well as before you, by the learned

counsel, have been presented as the doctrines of the Declaration of

Independence, and then I add to it the qualifying propositions, and

the practical, stern requisitions, which that instrument appends to

these general views:

"To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that

whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,

it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to

institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles,

and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most

likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will

dictate, that Governments long established should not be changed

for light and transient causes. And, accordingly, all experience

hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils

are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to

which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and

usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design

to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is

their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards

for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of

these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them

to alter their former systems of Government. The history of the

present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and

usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an

absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be

submitted to a candid world."

And it then proceeds to enumerate the facts, in the eloquent language

of the Declaration, made familiar to us all by its repeated and

reverent recitals on the day which celebrates its adoption. There is

not anything of moonshine about any one of them. There is not anything

of perhaps, or anticipation of fear, or suspicion. There is not

anything of this or that newspaper malediction, of this or that

rhetorical disquisition, of this or that theory, or of this or that

opprobrium, but a recital of direct governmental acts of Great

Britain, all tending to the purpose of establishing complete despotism

over this country. And, then, even that not being deemed sufficient,

on the part of our great ancestors, to justify this appeal to the

enlightened opinion of the world, and to the God who directs the fate

of armies, they say:

"In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for

redress, in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have

been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is

thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be

the ruler of a free people.

"Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.

We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their

Legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We

have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and

settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and

magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common

kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably

interrupt our connection and correspondence. They, too, have been

deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity."

Now, gentlemen, this doctrine of revolution, which our learned friends

rely upon, appeals to our own sense of right and duty. It rests upon

facts, and upon the purpose, as indicated by those facts, to deprive

our ancestors of the rights of Englishmen, and to subject them to the

power of a Government in which they were not represented. Now, whence

come the occasions and the grievances urged before you, and of what

kind are they? My learned friend, Mr. Brady, has given you a distinct

enumeration, under nine heads, of what the occasions are, and what the

grievances are. There is not one of them that, in form or substance,

proceeded from the Federal Government. There is not a statute, there

is not a proclamation, there is not an action, judicial, executive, or

legislative, on the part of the Federal Government, that finds a

place, either in consummation or in purpose, in this indictment drawn

by my friend Mr. Brady against the Government, on behalf of his

clients. The letter of South Carolina, on completing the revocation of

her adoption of the Constitution, addressed to the States, dwells upon

the interest of slavery (as does my learned friend Mr. Brady, in all

his propositions), and discloses but two ideas--one, that when any

body or set of people cease to be a majority in a Government, they

have a right to leave it; and the other, that State action, on the

part of some of the Northern States, had been inconsistent with,

threatening to, or opprobrious of the institution of slavery in the

Southern States.

Let me ask your attention to this proposition of the Southern States,

and this catalogue of the learned counsel. As it is only the interest

of slavery, social and political (for it is an interest, lawfully

existing), that leads to the destruction of our Government and of

their Government, let us see what there is in the actual circumstances

of this interest, as being able, under the forms of our Constitution,

to look out for itself, as well, at least, as any other interest in

the country, that can justify them in finding an example or a

precedent in the appeal of our fathers to arms to assert their rights

by the strong hand, because in the Government of England they had no

representation. Did our fathers say that, because they had not a

majority in the English Parliament, they had a right to rebel? No!

They said they had not a share or vote in the Parliament. That was

their proposition.

I now invite you to consider this fundamental view of the right and

power of Government, and the right and freedom of the people,--to wit,

that every citizen is entitled to be counted and considered as good as

every other citizen,--as a natural and abstract right--as the basis of

our Government, however other arrangements may have adjusted or

regulated that simple and abstract right. Then, let us see whether the

arrangement of the Federal Government, in departing from that natural

right of one man to be as good as another, and to be counted equal in

the representation of his Government, has operated to the prejudice of

the interest of slavery. We have not heard anything in this country of

any other interest for many a long year,--much to my disgust and

discontent. There are other interests,--manufacturing interests,

agricultural interests, commercial interests, all sorts of

interests,--some of them discordant, if you please. Let us see whether

this interest of slavery has a fair chance to be heard, and enjoys its

fair share of political power under our Government, or whether, from a

denial to it of its fair share, it has some pretext for appealing to

force. Why, gentlemen, take the fifteen Slave States, which, under the

census of 1850, had six millions of white people--that is, of

citizens--and, under the census of 1860, about eight millions, and

compare them with the white people of the State of New York, which,

under the census of 1850, had three millions, and, under the census of

1860, something like four millions.

Now, here we are,--they as good as we, and we as good as they,--we

having our interests, and opinions, and feelings--they their opinions,

interests, and feelings,--and let us see how the arrangement of

representation, in every part of our Government, is distributed

between these interests. Why, with a population just double that of

the State of New York, the interest of slavery has _thirty_ Senators

to vote and to speak for it, and the people of New York have _two_

Senators to vote and to speak for them. In the House of

Representatives these same Slave States have _ninety_ Representatives

to speak and to vote for them; and the people of the State of New York

have _thirty-three_ to vote and to speak for them. And, in the

Electoral College, which raises to the chief magistracy the citizen

who receives the constitutional vote, these same States have _one

hundred and twenty_ electoral votes, and the State of New York has

_thirty-five_. Why, the three coterminous States--New York,

Pennsylvania, and Ohio--have, under either census, as great or a

greater population than the fifteen Slave States, and they have but

six Senators, against the Slave States' thirty.

Do I mention this in complaint? Not in the least. I only mention it to

show you that the vote and the voice of this interest has not been

defrauded in the artificial distribution of Federal power. And, if I

may be allowed to refer to the other august department of our Federal

Government, the Supreme Court of the United States, in which the

Presiding Justice has his seat as one of the members of that Court,

you will see how the vast population, the vast interests of business,

commerce, and what not, that reside in the Free States, as compared

with the lesser population, the lesser business, and the lesser demand

for the authority or intervention of the judiciary in the Slave

States, have been represented for years, by the distribution of the

nine Judges of that Court, so that the eighteen millions of white

people who compose the population of the Free States have been

represented (not in any political sense) by four of these Justices;

and the rest of the country, the fifteen Slave States, with their

population of six or eight millions, have been represented by five.

Now, of this I do not complain. It is law--it is government; and no

injustice has been done to the Constitution, nor has it been violated

in this arrangement. But, has there been any fraud upon the interest

of slavery, in the favor the Federal Government has shown in the

marking out of the Judicial Districts, and in the apportionment of the

Judges to the different regions of the country, and to the population

of those regions? If you look at it as regards the business in the

different Circuits, the learned Justice who now presides here, and who

holds his place for the Second Circuit, including our State, disposes

annually, here and in the other Courts, of more business than, I may

perhaps say, all the Circuits that are made up from the Slave States.

And, if you look at it as regards the population, there was one

Circuit--that which was represented by the learned Mr. Justice McLean,

lately deceased--which contained within itself five millions of white,

free population; while one other Circuit, represented by another

learned Justice, lately deceased--a Circuit composed of Mississippi

and Arkansas--contained only 450,000, at the time of the completion of

the census of 1850. Who complains of this? Do we? Never. But, when it

is said to you that there is a parallelism between the right of

revolt, because of lack of representation, in the case of our people

and the Parliament of England, and the case of these people and the

United States, or any of the forms of its administration of power,

remember these things. I produce this in the simple duty of forensic

reply to the causes put forward as a justification of this

revolt--that is to say that, the Government oppressing them, or the

Government closed against them, and they excluded from it, they had a

right to resort to the revolution of force.

You, therefore, must adopt the proposition of South Carolina, that,

when any interest ceases to be the majority in a Government, it has a

right to secede. How long would such a Government last? Why, there

never was any interest in this country which imagined that it had a

majority. Did the tariff interest have a majority? Did the grain

interest have a majority? Did the commercial interest have a majority?

Did the States of the West have a majority? Does California gold

represent itself by a majority? Why, the very safety of such a

Government as this is, that no interest shall or can be a majority;

but that the concurring, consenting wisdom drawn out of these

conflicting interests shall work out a system of law which will

conduce to the general interest.

Now, that I have not done my learned friend, Mr. Brady, any injustice

in presenting the catalogue of grievances (not in his own view, but in

the view of those who have led in this rebellion), let us see what

they are:

"The claim to abolish slavery." Is there any statute of the United

States anywhere that has abolished it? Has any Act been introduced

into Congress to abolish it? Has the measure had a vote?

"Stoppage of the inter-state slave-trade." I may say the same thing of

that.

"No more slavery in the Territories." Where is the Act of Congress,

where is the movement of the Federal Government, where the decision of

the Supreme Court, that holds that slavery cannot go into a territory?

Why, so far as acts go, everything has gone in the way of recognizing

the confirmation of the right--the repeal of the Missouri Compromise

by Congress, and the decision of the Federal Court, if it go to that

extent, as is claimed, in the case of Dred Scott.

"Nullification of the fugitive-slave law." Who passed the

fugitive-slave law? Congress. Who have enforced it? The Federal power,

by arms, in the city of Boston. Who have enjoined its observation, to

Grand Juries and to Juries? The Justices of the Supreme Court of the

United States, in their Circuits. Who have held it to be

constitutional? The Supreme Court of the United States, and the

subordinate Courts of the United States, and every State Court that

has passed upon the subject, except it be the State Court of the State

of Wisconsin, if I am correctly advised.

"Under-ground railroads, supported by the Government, and paid by

them." Are they? Not in the least.

"The case of the Creole"--where, they say, no protection was given to

slaves on the high seas. Is there any judicial interpretation to that

effect? Nothing but the refusal of Congress to pass a bill, under some

circumstances of this or that nature, presented for its consideration;

and, because it has refused, it is alleged there is the assertion of

some principle that should charge upon this Government the inflamed

and particular views generally maintained on slavery by Garrison,

Phillips, and Theodore Parker.

The other enormities they clothe in general phrase, and do not

particularly specify, except one particular subject--what is known as

the "John Brown raid"--in regard to which, as it has been introduced,

I shall have occasion to say something in another connection, and,

therefore, I will not comment upon it now.

I find, however, I have omitted the last--Mr. Lincoln's doctrine, that

it is impossible, theoretically, for slave and free States to

co-exist. For many years that was considered to be Mr. Seward's

doctrine, but, when Mr. Lincoln became a candidate for the Presidency,

it was charged on him, being supported by some brief extracts from

former speeches made by him in canvassing his State. I cannot discuss

all these matters. They are beneath the gravity of State necessity,

and of the question of the right of revolution. They are the opinions,

the sentiments, the rhetoric, the folly, the local rage and madness,

if you please, in some instances, of particular inflammations, either

of sentiment or of action, rising in the bosom of so vast, so

impetuous a community as ours. But, suppose the tariff States, suppose

the grain States, were to attempt to topple down the Government, and

maintain a separate and sectional independence upon their interests,

of only the degree and gravity, and resting in the proof of facts like

these? Now, for the purpose of the argument, let us suppose all these

things to be wrong. My learned friends, who have made so great and so

passionate an appeal that individual lives should not be sacrificed

for opinion, certainly might listen to a proposition that the life of

a great nation should not be destroyed on these questions of the

opinions of individual citizens. No--you never can put either the fate

of a nation that it must submit, or the right of malcontents to assert

their power for its overthrow, upon any such proposition, of the

ill-working, or of the irritations that arise, and do not come up to

the effect of oppression, in the actual, the formal, and the

persistent movement of Government. Never for an instant. For that

would be, what Mr. Stephens has so ably presented the folly of doing,

to require that a great Government, counting in its population thirty

millions of men, should not only be perfect in its design and general

form and working, but that it should secure perfect action, perfect

opinions, perfect spirit and sentiments from every one of its

people--and that, made out of mere imperfect individuals who have

nothing but poor human nature for their possession, it should suddenly

become so transformed, as to be without a flaw, not only in its

administration, but in the conduct of every body under it.

Now, my learned friends, pressed by this difficulty as to the

sufficiency of the causes, are driven finally to this--that there is a

right of revolution when anybody thinks there is a right of

revolution, and that that is the doctrine upon which our Government

rests, and upon which the grave, serious action of our forefathers

proceeded. And it comes down to the proposition of my learned friend,

Mr. Brady, that it all comes to the same thing, the _power_ and the

_right_. All the argument, most unquestionably, comes to that. But do

morals, does reason, does common sense recognize that, because power

and right may result in the same consequences, therefore there is no

difference in their quality, or in their support, or in their theory?

If I am slain by the sword of justice for my crime, or by the dagger

of an assassin for my virtue, I am dead, under the stroke of either.

But is one as right as the other? An oppressive Government may be

overthrown by the uprising of the oppressed, and Lord Camden's maxim

may be adhered to, that "when oppression begins, resistance becomes a

right;" but a Government, beneficent and free, may be attacked, may be

overthrown by tyranny, by enemies, by mere power. The Colonies may be

severed from Great Britain, on the principle of the right of the

people asserting itself against the tyranny of the parent Government;

and Poland may be dismembered by the interested tyranny of Russia and

Austria; and each is a revolution and destruction of the Government,

and its displacement by another--a dismemberment of the community, and

the establishment of a new one under another Government. But, do my

learned friends say that they equally come to the test of power as

establishing the right? Will my learned friend plant himself, in

justification of this dismemberment of a great, free, and prosperous

people, upon the example of the dismemberment of Poland, by the

introduction of such influences within, and by the co-operation of

such influences without, as secured that result? Certainly not. And

yet, if he puts it upon the right and the power, as coming to the same

thing, it certainly cannot make any difference whether the power

proceeds from within or from without. There is no such right. Both the

public action of communities and the private action of individuals

must be tried, if there is any trial, any scrutiny, any judgment, any

determination, upon some principles that are deeper than the question

of counting bayonets. When we are referred to the ease of Victor

Emannuel overthrowing the throne of the King of Naples, and thus

securing the unity of the Italian people under a benign Government,

are we to be told that the same principle and the same proposition

would have secured acceptance before the forum of civilization, and in

the eye of morality, to a successful effort of the tyrant of Naples to

overthrow the throne of Victor Emannuel, and include the whole of

Italy under his, King Bomba's, tyranny? No one. The quality of the

act, the reason, the support, and the method of it, are traits that

impress their character on those great public and national

transactions as well as upon any other.

There is but one proposition, in reason and morality, beyond those I

have stated, which is pressed for the extrication and absolution of

these prisoners from the guilt that the law, as we say, impresses upon

their action and visits with its punishment. It is said that, however

little, as matter of law, these various rights and protections may

come to, good faith, or sincere, conscientious conviction on the part

of these men as to what they have done, should protect them against

the public justice.

Now, we have heard a great deal of the assertion and of the execration

of the doctrine of the "higher law," in the discussions of

legislation, and in the discussions before the popular mind; but I

never yet have heard good faith or sincere opinion pressed, in a Court

of Justice, as a bar to the penalty which the law has soberly affixed,

in the discreet and deliberate action of the Legislature. And here my

learned friend furnishes me, by his reference to the grave instance of

injury to the property, and the security, and the authority of the

State of Virginia, which he has spoken of as "John Brown's raid," with

a ready instance, in which these great principles of public justice,

the authority of Government, and the sanctions of human law were met,

in the circumstances of the transaction, by a complete, and thorough,

and remarkable reliance, for the motive, the support, the stimulus,

the solace, against all the penalties which the law had decreed for

such a crime, on this interior authority of conscience, and this

supremacy of personal duty, according to the convictions of him who

acts. The great State of Virginia administered its justice, and it

found, as its principal victim, this most remarkable man, in regard to

whom it was utterly impossible to impute anything like present or

future, near or remote, personal interest or object of any kind--a man

in regard to whom Governor Wise, of Virginia, said, in the very

presence of the transaction of his trial, that he was the bravest, the

sincerest, the truthfulest man that he ever knew. And now, let us look

at the question in the light in which our learned friend presents

it--that John Brown, as matter of theoretical opinion of what he had a

right to do, under the Constitution and laws of his country, was

justified, upon the pure basis of conscientious duty to God--and let

us see whether, before the tribunals of Virginia, as matter of fact,

or matter of law, or right, or duty, any recognition was given to it.

No. John Brown was not hung for his theoretical heresies, nor was he

hung for the hallucinations of his judgment and the aberration of his

wrong moral sense, if you so call it, instead of the interior light of

conscience, as he regarded it. He was hung for attacking the

sovereignty, the safety, the citizens, the property, and the people of

Virginia. And, when my learned friend talks about this question of

hanging for political, moral, or social heresy, and that you cannot

thus coerce the moral power of the mind, he vainly seeks to beguile

your judgment. When Ravaillac takes the life of good King Henry, of

France, is it a justification that, in the interests of his faith,

holy to him--of the religion he professed--he felt impelled thus to

take the life of the monarch? When the assassin takes, at the door of

the House of Commons, the life of the Prime Minister, Mr. Percival,

because he thinks that the course of measures his administration

proposes to carry out is dangerous to the country, and falls a victim

to violated laws, I ask, in the name of common sense and common

fairness--are these executions to be called hanging for political or

religious heresies? No. And shall it ever be said that sincere

convictions on these theories of secession and of revolution are

entitled to more respect than sincere convictions and opinions on the

subject of human rights? Shall it be said that faith in Jefferson

Davis is a greater protection from the penalty of the law than faith

in God was to John Brown or Francis Ravaillac?

But, gentlemen, it was said that certain isolated acts of some

military or civil authority of the United States, or some promulgation

of orders, or affirmation of measures by the Government, had

recognized the belligerent right, or the right to be considered as a

power fighting for independence, of this portion of our countrymen.

The flags of truce, and the capitulation at Hatteras Inlet, and the

announcement that we would not invade Virginia, but would protect the

Capital, are claimed as having recognized this point. Now, gentlemen,

this attempts either too much or too little. Is it gravely to be said

that, when the Government is pressing its whole power for the

restoration of peace and for the suppression of this rebellion, it is

recognizing a right to rebel, or has liberated from the penalties of

the criminal law such actors in it as it may choose to bring to

punishment? Is it to be claimed here that, by reason of these

proceedings, the Government has barred itself from taking such other

proceedings, under the same circumstances, as it may think fit? Why,

certainly not. The Government may, at any time, refuse to continue

this amenity of flags of truce. It can, the next time, refuse to

receive a capitulation as "prisoners of war," and may, in any future

action--as, indeed, in its active measures for the suppression of the

rebellion it is doing--affirm its control over every part of the

revolted regions of this country. There is nothing in this fact that

determines anything for the occasion, but the occasion itself. The

idea that the commander of an expedition to Hatteras Inlet has it in

his power to commit the Government, so as to empty the prisons, to

overthrow the Courts, and to discharge Jurors from their duty, and

criminals from the penalties of their crimes, is absurd.

I shall now advert to the opinion of Judge Cadwalader, on the trial in

Philadelphia, and to the propositions of the counsel there, on behalf

of the prisoners, as containing and including the general views and

points urged, in one form or another, and with greater prolixity, at

least, if not earnestness and force, by the learned counsel who defend

the prisoners here. It will be found that those points cover all these

considerations:

_First._ If the Confederate States of America is a Government,

either _de facto_ or _de jure_, it had a right to issue letters of

marque and reprisal; and if issued before the commission of the

alleged offence, that the defendant, acting under the authority of

such letters, would be a privateer, and not a pirate, and, as

such, is entitled to be acquitted.

_Second._ That if, at the time of the alleged offence, the

Southern Confederacy, by actual occupation, as well as acts of

Government, had so far acquired the mastery or control of the

particular territory within its limits as to enable it to exercise

authority over, and to demand and exact allegiance from, its

residents, that then a resident of such Confederacy owes

allegiance to the Government under which he lives, or, at least,

that by rendering allegiance to such Government, whether on sea or

land, he did not thereby become a traitor to the Government of the

United States.

_Third._ That if, at the time of the alleged offence and the

issuing of the letters of marque and reprisal upon which the

defendant acted, the Courts of the United States were so suspended

or closed in the Southern Confederacy, as to be no longer able to

administer justice and enforce the law in such Confederacy, that

the defendant thereby became so far absolved from his allegiance

to the United States as to enable him to take up arms for, and to

enter the service of, the Southern Confederacy, either on land or

sea, without becoming a traitor to the Government of the United

States.

_Fourth._ That if, at the time of the alleged offence and his

entering into the service of the Southern Confederacy, the

defendant was so situated as to be unable to obtain either civil

or military protection from the United States, whilst at the same

time he was compelled to render either military or naval service

to the Southern Confederacy, or to leave the country, and, in this

event, to have his property sequestrated or confiscated by the

laws of the said Confederacy, that such a state of things, if they

existed, would amount in law to such duress as entitles the

defendant here to an acquittal.

_Fifth._ That this Court has no jurisdiction of the case, because

the prisoner, after his apprehension on the high seas, was first

brought into another District, and ought to have been there tried.

And now, gentlemen, even a more remote, unconnected topic, has been

introduced into this examination, and discussed and pursued with a

good deal of force and feeling, by my learned friend, Mr. Brady; and

that is, what this war is for, and what is expected to be accomplished

by it. Well, gentlemen, is your verdict to depend upon any question of

that kind? Is it to depend either upon the purpose of the Government

in waging the war, or upon its success in that purpose? If so, the

trial had been better postponed to the end of the war, and then you

will find your verdict in the result. What is the meaning of this? Let

those who began the war say what the war is for. Is it to overthrow

this Government and to dismember its territory? Is it to acquire

dominion over as large a portion of what constitutes the possessions

of the American people, and over as large a share of its population,

as the policy or the military power of the interest that establishes

for itself an independent Government, for its own protection, can

accomplish? Who are seeking to subjugate, and who is seeking to

protect? No subjugation is attempted or desired, in respect of the

people of these revolting States, except that subjugation which they

themselves made for themselves when they adopted the Constitution of

the United States, and thanked God, with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney,

that his blessing permitted them to do so,--and, up to this time, with

Alexander Stephens, have found it to be a Government that can only be

likened, on this terrestrial sphere, to the Eden and Paradise of the

nations of men. What is the interest that is seeking to wrest from the

authority of that benign Government portions of its territory and

authority, but the social and political interest of slavery, about

which I make no other reproach or question than this--that it has

purposes, and objects, and principles which do not consult the general

or equal interests of the population of these revolting States

themselves, nor contemplate a form of Government that any Charles

Cotesworth Pinckney, now, or any Alexander Stephens, hereafter, can

thank God for having been permitted to establish; and that, as Mr.

Stephens has said, instead of becoming gods, by bursting from the

restraints of this Eden, they will discover their own nakedness, and,

instead of finding peace and prosperity, they will come to cutting

their own throats.

Now, what is the duty of a Government that finds this assault made by

the hands of terror and of force against the judgment and wishes of

the discreet, sober, and temperate, at least, to those to whom it owes

protection, as they owe allegiance to it? What, but to carry on, by

the force of the Government, the actual suppression of the rebellion,

so that arms may be laid down, peace may exist, and the law and the

Constitution be reinstated, and the great debate of opinion be

restored, that has been interrupted by this vehement recourse to arms?

What, but to see to it that, instead of the consequences of this

revolt being an expulsion, from this Paradise of free Government, of

these people whom we ought to keep within it, it shall end in the

expulsion of that tempting serpent--be it secession or be it

slavery--that would drive them out of it. Government has duties,

gentlemen, as well as rights. If our lives and our property are

subject to its demands under the penal laws, or for its protection and

enforcement as an authority in the world, it carries to every citizen,

on the farthest sea, in the humblest schooner, and to the great

population of these Southern States in their masses at home, that firm

protection which shall secure him against the wicked and the willful

assaults, whether it be of a pirate on a distant sea, or of an

ambitious and violent tyranny upon land. When this state of peace and

repose is accomplished by Conventions, by petitions, by

representations against Federal laws, Federal oppressions, or Federal

principles of government, the right of the people to be relieved from

oppression is presented; and then may the spirit and the action of our

fathers be invoked, and their condemnation of the British Parliament

come in play, if we do not do what is right and just in liberating an

oppressed people. But I need not say to you that the whole active

energies of this system of terror and of force in the Southern States

have been directed to make impossible precisely the same debate, the

same discussion, the same appeal, and the same just and equal

attention to the appeal. And you will find this avowed by many of

their speakers and by many of their writers--as, when Mr. Toombs

interrupts Mr. Stephens in the speech I have quoted from, when urging

that the people of Georgia should be consulted, by saying: "I am

afraid of Conventions and afraid of the people; I do not want to hear

from the cross-roads and the groceries," which are the opportunities

of public discussion and influence, it appears, in the State of

Georgia. That is exactly what they did not want to hear from; and

their rash withdrawal of this great question from such honest,

sensible consideration, will finally bring them to a point that the

people, interested in the subject, will take it by force; and then,

besides their own nakedness, which they have now discovered, the

second prophecy of Mr. Stephens, that they will cut their own throats,

will come about; and nothing but the powerful yet temperate, the firm

yet benign, authority of this Government, compelling peace upon these

agitations, will save those communities from social destruction and

from internecine strife at home.

Now, having such an object, can it be accomplished? It cannot, unless

you try; and it cannot, if every soldier who goes into the field

concludes that he will not fire off his gun, for it is uncertain

whether it will end the war; or if, on any post of duty that is

devolved upon citizens in private life, we desert our Government, and

our full duty to the Government. But that it can be done, and that it

will be done, and that all this talk and folly about conquering eight

millions of people will result in nothing, I find no room to doubt. In

the first place, where are your eight millions? Why, there are the

fifteen Slave States, and four of them--Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky,

and Missouri--are not yet within the Confederacy. So we will subtract

three millions, at least, for that part of the concern. Then there are

five millions to be conquered; and how are they to be conquered? Why,

not by destruction, not by slaughter, not by chains and manacles; but

by the impression of the power of the Government, showing that the

struggle is vain, that the appeal to arms was an error and a crime,

and that, in the region of debate and opinion, and in equal

representation in the Government itself, is the remedy for all

grievances and evils. Be sure that, whatever may be said or thought of

this question of war, these people can be, not subjugated, but

compelled to entertain those inquiries by peaceful means; and I am

happy to be able to say that the feeble hopes and despairing views

which my learned friend, Mr. Brady, has thought it his duty to express

before you, as to the hopelessness of any useful result to these

hostilities, is not shared by one whom my friend, in the eloquent

climax to an oration, placed before us as "starting, in a red shirt,

to secure the liberties of Italy." I read his letter:

"CAPRERA, _Sept. 10_.

"_Dear Sir_: I saw Mr. Sandford, and regret to be obliged to

announce to you that I shall not be able to go to the United

States at present. I do not doubt of the triumph of the cause of

the Union, and that shortly; but, if the war should unfortunately

continue in your beautiful country, I shall overcome the obstacles

which detain me and hasten to the defence of a people who are dear

to me.

"G. GARIBALDI."

Garibaldi has had some experience, and knows the difference between

efforts to make a people free, and the warlike and apparently

successful efforts of tyranny; and he knows that a failure, even

temporary, does not necessarily secure to force, and fraud, and

violence a permanent success. He knows the difference between

restoring a misguided people to a free Government, and putting down

the efforts of a people to get up a free Government. He knows those

are two different things; and, if the war be not shortly ended, as he

thinks it will be, then he deems it right for him, fresh from the

glories of securing the liberties of Italy, to assist in

maintaining--what? Despotism? No! the liberties of America.

One of the learned counsel, who addressed you in a strain of very

effective and persuasive eloquence, charmed us all by the grace of his

allusion to a passage in classical history, and recalled your

attention to the fact that, when the States of Greece which had warred

against Athens, anticipating her downfall beneath the prowess of their

arms, met to determine her fate, and when vindictive Thebes and

envious Corinth counseled her destruction, the genius of the Athenian

Sophocles, by the recital of the chorus of the Electra, disarmed this

cruel purpose, by reviving the early glories of united Greece. And the

counsel asked that no voice should be given to punish harshly these

revolted States, if they should be conquered.

The voice of Sophocles in the chorus of the Electra, and those

glorious memories of the early union, were produced to bring back into

the circle of the old confederation the erring and rebellious Attica.

So, too, what shall we find in the memories of the Revolution, or in

the eloquence with which we have been taught to revere them, that will

not urge us all, by every duty to the past, to the present, and to the

future, to do what we can, whenever a duty is reposed in us, to

sustain the Government in its rightful assertion of authority and in

the maintenance of its power? Let me ask your attention to what has

been said by the genius of Webster on so great a theme as the memory

of Washington, bearing directly on all these questions of union, of

glory, of hope, and of duty, which are involved in this inquiry. See

whether, from the views thus invoked, there will not follow the same

influence as from the chorus of the Electra, for the preservation, the

protection, the restoration of every portion of what once was, and now

is, and, let us hope, ever shall be, our common country.

On the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the birthday of

Washington, at the national Capital, in 1832, Mr. Webster, by the

invitation of men in public station as well as of the citizens of the

place, delivered an oration, about which I believe the common judgment

of his countrymen does not differ from what is known to have been his

own idea, that it was the best presentation of his views and feelings

which, in the long career of his rhetorical triumphs, he had had the

opportunity to make.

No man ever thought or spoke of the character of Washington, and of

the great part in human affairs which he played, without knowing and

feeling that the crowning glory of all his labors in the field and in

the council, and the perpetual monument to his fame, if his fame shall

be perpetual, would be found in the establishment of the American

Union under the American Constitution. All the prowess of the war, all

the spirit of the Revolution, all the fortitude of the effort, all the

self-denial of the sacrifice of that period, were for nothing, and

worse than nothing, if the result and consummation of the whole were

to be but a Government that contained within itself the seeds of its

own destruction, and existed only at the caprice and whim of whatever

part of the people should choose to deny its rightfulness or seek to

overthrow its authority. In pressing that view, Mr. Webster thus

attracts the attention of his countrymen to the great achievement in

human affairs which the establishment of this Government has proved to

be, and thus illustrates the character of Washington:

"It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington that, having been

intrusted, in revolutionary times, with the supreme military

command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for

wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the first

Government in which an attempt was to be made, on a large scale, to

rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written

Constitution and of a pure representative principle. A Government

was to be established, without a throne, without an aristocracy,

without castes, orders, or privileges; and this Government, instead

of being a democracy, existing and acting within the walls of a

single city, was to be extended over a vast country, of different

climates, interests and habits, and of various communions of our

common Christian faith. The experiment certainly was entirely new.

A popular Government of this extent, it was evident, could be

framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of

representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see

whether society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain

its own peace and good government, carry forward its own great

interests, and conduct itself to political renown and glory.

* * * * *

"* * * * I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole world was and is

interested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so? Do

we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the career

which this Government is running is among the most attractive

objects to the civilized world? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it

true that at this moment that love of liberty and that

understanding of its true principles, which are flying over the

whole earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really and truly

of American origin? * * * * *

"* * * * Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free

Government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America,

has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an

emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return

void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth.

Our great, our high duty, is to show, in our own example, that this

spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its

longevity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to

secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is

equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates

principalities and powers. The world at this moment is regarding us

with a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep

and awful anxiety is to learn whether free States may be stable as

well as free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as

feared; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous

self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or

a truth established, illustrated, and brought into practice in the

country of Washington.

"Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of

the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in

our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If

we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall

prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be

imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world

look for free models? If this great _Western Sun_ be struck out of

the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty

hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer,

even, on the darkness of the world? * * * * *

"* * * * The political prosperity which this country has attained

and which it now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the

instrumentality of the present Government. While this agent

continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of

prosperity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life

capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome

misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human

affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest.

But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves these

faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this great

agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we possess, but

all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new, possessions. It

would leave the country, not only bereft of its prosperity and

happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to

exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and

happiness.

"Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If

disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another

generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future

industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields,

still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and

ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of

yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall,

and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the

valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the

fabric of demolished Government? Who shall rear again the

well-proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall

frame together the skilful architecture which unites national

sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public

prosperity? No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not

again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined

to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however,

will flow over them, than were ever shed over the monuments of

Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more

glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw--the edifice of

constitutional American Liberty. * * * * *

"* * * * A hundred years hence other disciples of Washington will

celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now

commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do

themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue

summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as

they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose

banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so surely may they

see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of

the Capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no

land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own

country!"

If, gentlemen, the eloquence of Mr. Webster, which thus enshrines the

memory and the great life of Washington, calls us back to the glorious

recollections of the Revolution and the establishment of our

Government, does it not urge every man everywhere that his share in

this great trust is to be performed now or never, and wherever his

fidelity and his devotion to his country, its Government and its

spirit, shall place the responsibility upon him? It is not the fault of

the Government, of the learned District Attorney, or of me, his humble

associate, that this, your verdict, has been removed, by the course of

this argument and by the course of this eloquence on the part of the

prisoners, from the simple issue of the guilt or innocence of these men

under the statute. It is not the action or the choice of the

Government, or of its counsel, that you have been drawn into higher

considerations. It is not our fault that you have been invoked to give,

on the undisputed facts of the case, a verdict which shall be a

recognition of the power, the authority, and the right of the rebel

Government to infringe our laws, or partake in the infringement of

them, to some form and extent. And now, here is your duty, here your

post of fidelity--not against law, not against the least right under

the law, but to sustain, by whatever sacrifice there may be of

sentiment or of feeling, the law and the Constitution. I need not say

to you, gentlemen, that if, on a state of facts which admits no

diversity of opinion, with these opposite forces arrayed, as they now

are, before you--the Constitution of the United States, the laws of the

United States, the commission of this learned Court, derived from the

Government of the United States, the venire and the empanneling of this

Jury, made under the laws and by the authority of the United States, on

our side--met, on their side, by nothing, on behalf of the prisoners,

but the commission, the power, the right, the authority of the rebel

Government, proceeding from Jefferson Davis--you are asked, by the law,

or under the law, or against the law, in some form, to recognize this

power, and thus to say that the folly and the weakness of a free

Government find here their last extravagant demonstration, then you are

asked to say that the vigor, the judgment, the sense, and the duty of a

Jury, to confine themselves to their responsibility on the facts of the

case, are worthless and yielding before impressions of a discursive and

loose and general nature. Be sure of it, gentlemen, that, on what I

suppose to be the facts concerning this particular transaction, a

verdict of acquittal is nothing but a determination that our Government

and its authority, in the premises of this trial, for the purposes of

your verdict, are met and overthrown by the protection thrown around

the prisoners by the Government of the Confederate States of America,

actual or incipient. Let us hope that you will do what falls to your

share in the post of protection in which you are placed, for the

liberties of this nation and the hopes of mankind; for, in surrendering

them, you will be forming a part of the record on the common grave of

the fabric of this Government, and of the hopes of the human race,

where our flag shall droop, with every stripe polluted and every star

erased, and the glorious legend of "Liberty and Union, now and forever,

one and inseparable," replaced by this mournful confession, "Unworthy

of freedom, our baseness has surrendered the liberties which we had

neither the courage nor the virtue to love or defend."