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POLITICAL SPEECHES.

POLITICAL SPEECHES.

THE ADVENT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

ALBANY, OCTOBER 12, 1855.

HAIL to the capital of New York! Venerable for its antiquity, and yet distinguished for its loyalty to progress, liberty and union. This capital is dear to me. It has more than once sent me abroad with honorable functions, and even in those adverse seasons which have happened to me, as they must happen to all representative men, it has never failed to receive me at home again with sympathy and kindness. Doubly honored be the banner of the stars and stripes, which here takes on its highest significance, as it waves over the halls where equal representatives make the laws which regulate the lives of equal freemen. Honored be Justice, whose statue surmounts the dome above us! Blind, that she may not, through either passion or prejudice, discriminate between the rich and the poor, the Protestant and Catholic, the native born and the exotic, the freeman and him whose liberties have been cloven down, and weighing with exact balance the rights of all classes and all races of men. Old familiar echoes greet my ear from beneath these embowered roofs! The voices of the Spencers, of Kent, and Van Rensselaer, and Van Vechten, of the genial Tompkins, of Clinton the great, and the elder Clinton, of King and Hamilton, of Jay, the pure and benevolent, and Schuyler, the gallant and inflexible. The very air that lingers around these arches, breathes inspirations of moral, social, of physical enterprise, and of unconquerable freedom.

You, old, tried, familiar friends, ask my counsel whether to cling yet longer to traditional controversies and to dissolving parties, or VOL. IV.

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to rise at once to nobler aims, with new and more energetic associations! I do not wonder at your suspense, nor do I censure caution or even timidity. Fickleness in political associations is a weakness, and precipitancy in public action is a crime. Considered by itself, it is unfortunate to be obliged to separate from an old party and to institute a new one. The new one may exhibit more enthusiasm for a time, but it must also for a time lack cohesion and discipline. The names of parties are generally arbitrary, and not at all indicative of their characters or purposes. A generous man will, nevertheless, cling, as if it were a family altar, to a name that has long been a rallying cry for himself and his compatriots.

The great question before us, however, is to be decided, not by feeling, but under the counsels of reason and patriotism. It was the last injunction given by the last one of the revolutionary congresses to the American people, never to forget that the cause of America had always been, and that it must ever continue to be, the cause of human nature. The question then, is, what is the course dictated to us by our love of country and of humanity?

The nation was founded on the simple and practically new principle of the equal and inalienable rights of all men, and therefore it necessarily became a republic. Other governments, founded on the ancient principle of the inequality of men, are, by force of an equal necessity, monarchies or aristocracies. Whenever either of these kinds of government loses by lapse of time and change of circumstances its elementary principle, whether of equality or inequality, thenceforward it takes a rapid and irresistible course toward a reörganization of the opposite kind. No one, here or elsewhere, is so disloyal to his country or to mankind, as to be willing to see our republican system fail. All agree that in every case, and throughout all hazards, aristocracy must be abhorred and avoided, and republican institutions must be defended and preserved.

Think it not strange or extravagant when I say that an aristocracy has already arisen here, and that it is already undermining the republic. An aristocracy could not arise in any country where there was no privileged class, and no special foundation on which such a class could permanently stand. On the contrary, every state, however republican its constitution may be, is sure to become an aristocracy, sooner or later, if it has a privileged class standing firmly on an enduring special foundation; and if that class is continually

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