I am not before you to garner the scars and disjointed columns of free government. The Republic that has been reared by a century of patriotic labor and sacrifice more than covers its wounds with the noblest achievements ever recorded in man's struggle for the rights of man. It is not perfect in its administration or in the exercise of its vast and responsible powers; but when was it so? when shall it be so? No human work is perfect. No government in all the past has been without its misshaped ends; and few, indeed, have survived three generations without revolution. We must have been more than mortals if our history does not present much that we would be glad to efface. We should be unlike all great peoples of the earth if we did not mark the ebb and flow of public virtue, and the consequent struggles between the good and evil elements of a society in which freedom is at times debased to license. We have had seasons of war and of peace. We have had tidal waves of passion, with their sweeping demoralization. We have enlisted the national pride in the perilous line of conquest, and vindicated it by the beneficent fruits of our civilization. We have had the tempest of aggression, and the profound calm that was the conservator of peace throughout the world. We have revolutionized the policy of the government through the bitter conflicts of opposing opinions, and it has been strengthened by its trials. We have had the fruits of national struggles transferred to the vanquished without a shade of violence; and the extreme power of impeachment has been invoked in the midst of intense political strife, and its judgment patriotically obeyed. We have had fraternal war, with its terrible bereavements and destruction. We have completed the circle of national perils, and the virtue and intelligence of the people have ever been the safety of the Republic.

At no previous period of our history have opportunity and duty so happily united to direct the people of this

country to the triumphs and to the imperfections of our government. We have reached a healthy calm in our political struggles. The nation has a trusted ruler, just chosen by an overwhelming vote. The disappointments of conviction or of ambition have passed away, and all yield cordial obedience and respect to the lawful authority of the country. The long-lingering passions of civil war have, for the last time, embittered our political strife, and must now be consigned to forgetfulness. The nation is assured of peace. The embers of discord may convulse a State until justice shall be enthroned over mad partisanship, but peace and justice are the inexorable purposes of the people, and they will be obeyed. Sectional hatred, long fanned by political necessities, is henceforth effaced from our politics, and the unity of a sincere brotherhood will be the cherished faith of every citizen. We first conquered rebellion, and now have conquered the bitterness and estrangement of its discomfiture. The VicePresident of the insurgent Confederacy is a representative in our Congress. One who was first in the field and last in the Senate in support of rebellion has just died while representing the government in a diplomatic position of the highest honor. Another who served the Confederacy in the field and in the forum has been one of the constitutional advisers of the national administration. One of the most brilliant of Confederate warriors now serves in the United States Senate, and has presided over that body. The first lieutenant of Lee was long since honored with responsible and lucrative official trust, and many of lesser note, lately our enemies, are discharging important public duties. The war and its issues are settled forever. Those who were arrayed against each other in deadly conflict are now friends. The appeal from the ballot to the sword has been made, and its arbitrament has been irrevocably ratified by the supreme power of the nation. Each has won from the other the

respect that is ever awarded to brave men, and the affection that was clouded by the passion that made both rush to achieve an easy triumph, has returned chastened and strengthened by our common sacrifices. Our battlefields will be memorable as the theatres of the conflicts of the noblest people the world had to offer to the god of carnage, and the monuments to our dead, North and South, will be pointed to by succeeding generations as the proud records of the heroism of the American people.

The overshadowing issues touching the war and its logical results are now no longer in controversy, and in vain will the unworthy invoke patriotism to give them unmerited distinction. No supreme danger can now confront the citizen who desires to correct errors or abuses of our political system. He who despairs of free institutions because evils have been tolerated would have despaired of every administration the country has ever had, and of every government the world has ever known. If corruption pervades our institutions to an alarming extent, let it not be forgotten that it is the natural order of history repeating itself. It is but the experience of every nation, and our own experience returning to us, to call into vigorous action the regenerating power of a patriotic people. We have a supreme tribunal that is most jealous of its high prerogatives, and that will wield its authority mercilessly when the opportune season arrives. We have just emerged from the most impassioned and convulsive strife of modern history. It called out the highest type of patriotism, and life and treasure were freely given with the holiest devotion to the cause of self-government. With it came those of mean ambition, and of venal purposes, and they could gain power while the unselfish were devoted to the country's cause. They could not be dethroned because there were grave issues which dare not be sacrificed. Such evils must be borne at times in all governments, rather than destroy the

temple to punish the enemies of public virtue. To whatever extent these evils exist, they are not the legitimate creation of our free institutions. They are not the creation of mal-administration, nor of any party. They are the monstrous barnacles spawned by unnatural war, which clogged the gallant ship of State in her extremity, and had to be borne into port with her. And now that the battle is ended, and the issue settled, do not distrust the reserved power of our free institutions. It will heal the scars of war and efface the stains of corruption, and present the great Republic to the world surpassing in grandeur, might and excellence, the sublimest conceptions ever cherished of human government.

As you come to assume the responsibilities which must be accepted by the educated citizen, you will be profoundly impressed with the multiplied dangers which threaten the government. They will appear not only to be innumerable and likely to defy correction, but they will seem to be of modern creation. It is common to hear intelligent political leaders declaim against the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the times, and especially against the decline in public morality and statesmanship. They would make it appear that the people and the government in past times were models of purity and excellence, while we are unworthy sons of noble sires. Our rulers are pronounced imbecile or wholly devoted to selfish ends. Our law-makers are declared to be reeking with corruption or blinded by ambition, and greed and faithlessness are held up to the world as the chief characteristics of our officials. From this painful picture we turn to the history of those who ruled in the earlier and what we call the better days of the Republic, and the contrast sinks us deep in the slough of despair. I am not prepared to say that much of the complaint against the political degeneracy of the times, and the standard of our officials, is not just; but in the face of all that can be

charged against the present, I regard it as the very best age this nation has ever known. The despairing accusations made against our public servants are not the peculiar creation of the times in which we live, and the allegation of widespread demoralization in the body politic was no more novel in any of the generations of the past than it is now. We say nothing of our rulers that was not said of those whose memory we so sacredly worship. License is one of the chief penalties, indeed the sole defect, of liberty, and it has ever asserted its prerogatives with tireless industry. It was as irreverent with Washington as it is with Grant. It racked Jefferson and Jackson, and it pained and scarred Lincoln and Chase and their compatriots. It criticised the campaigns and the heroes of the revolutionary times as we criticise the living heroes of our day. It belittled the statesmen of every epoch in our national progress just as we belittle those who are now the guardians of our free institutions. Perhaps we have more provocation than they had; but if so, they were less charitable, for the tide of ungenerous criticism and distrust has known no cessation. I believe we have had seasons when our political system was more free from blemish than it is now, and that we have had periods when both government and people maintained a higher standard of excellence than we can boast of; but it is equally true that we have, in the past, sounded a depth in the decline of our political administration that the present age can never reach.

You must soon appear in the active struggles for the perpetuity of free government, and some of the sealed chapters of the past are most worthy of your careful study. I would not efface one good inspiration that you have gathered from the lives and deeds of our fathers, whose courage and patriotism have survived their infirmities. Whatever we have from them that is purifying or elevating is but the truth of history; and when unborn generations