the States of Europe. For more than four- | destruction. Ambitious demagogues prosteen hundred years a handful of isolated tituted such mockeries of government to people, the followers of a Dalmatian her- the basest purposes. The Olympic games mit priest, have given the world an ex- of Greece became the mere instruments of ample of unsullied freedom. Through all unscrupulous leaders to lure the people, in the mutations, and revolutions, and re- the name of freedom, to oppression and linings of the maps of Europe, the little degradation, and the wealth of Rome was territory of San Marino has been sacredly lavishly employed to corrupt the source of respected. Her less than ten thousand popular power, and spread demoralization people have prospered without interrup- throughout the Republic. The debauched tion; and civil commotions and foreign citizens and soldiers were inflamed by cundisputes or conflicts have been unknown ning and corrupt devices, against the purest among them. She has had no wealth to and most eminent of the sincere defenders tempt the spoiler; no commerce or teem- of liberty; and the vengeance of the infuing valleys to invite conquest; no wars to riated mob, usurping the supreme power of breed dictators; no surplus revenues to the State, would doom to exile or to death, corrupt her officials; and in patient and honest Romans who struggled for Roman frugal industry her citizens have enjoyed freedom. Cato, the younger, Tribune of the national felicity of having no history. the people, and faithful to his country, took They have had no trials and no triumphs, his own life to escape the reprobation of a and have made civilization better only by polluted sovereignty. Cicero was Consul the banner of peace they have worshipped of the people, made so by his triumph over through all the convulsions and bloody Cæsar. But the same people who worstrife of many centuries. shipped him and to whose honor and prosThe world has but one Republic perity he was devoted, banished him in that has illustrated constitutional freedom disgrace, confiscated his wealth and devasin all its beneficence, power and grandeur, tated his home. Again he was recalled and that is our own priceless inheritance. through a triumphal ovation, and again As a government, our Republic has alone proscribed by the triumvirs and murdered been capable of, and faithful to, represen- by the soldiers of Antony. The Grecian tative free institutions, with equal rights, equal justice, and equal laws for every condition of our fellows. All the nations of the past furnish no history that can logically repeat itself in our advancement or decline. Created through the severest trials and sacrifices; maintained through foreign and civil war with unexampled devotion; faithful to law as the offspring and safety of liberty; progressive in all that ennobles our peaceful industry, and cherishing enlightened and liberal Christian civilization as the trust and pride of our citizens, for our government of the people, none but itself can be its parallel. Republic banished "Aristides the just," and Demosthenes, the first orator of the world, who withstood the temptations of Macedonian wealth, was fined, exiled and his death decreed. He saved his country the shame of his murder by suicide. Miltiades won the plaudits of Greece for his victories, only to die in prison of wounds received in fighting her battles. Themistocles, orator, statesman and chieftain, was banished and died in exile. Pericles, once master of Athens, and who gave the world the highest attainments in Grecian arts, was deposed from military and civil authority by the people he had honored. In what are called free governments of Socrates, immortal teacher of Grecian antiquity, we search in vain for constitu- philosophy, soldier and senator, and one of tional freedom, or that liberty that subor- the most shining examples of public virdinates passion and license to law. The tue, was ostracised and condemned and refuge from the constant perils of an unre- drank the fatal hemlock. The Republic strained Democracy was always found in of Carthage gave the ancients their greatdespotism, and when absolutism became est general, and as chief magistrate, he was intolerable, the tide of passion would surge as wise in statesmanship as he was skillful back to Democracy. The people, in mass in war; but in a strange land Hannibal councils, would rule Consuls, Presidents closed his eyes to his country's woes by and Generals, but it was fruitful only of taking his own life. Nor need we confine chaos and revolution. The victorious our research to Pagan antiquity alone, for chieftain and the illustrious philosopher would be honored with thanksgivings to the gods for their achievements, and their banishment or death would next be demanded by the same supreme tribunal. Grand temples and columns and triumphal arches would be erected to commemorate the victories of the dominant power, and the returning waves of revolution would decree the actors and their monuments to such stains upon what is called popular government. During the present century France has enthroned and banished the Bourbons, and worshiped and execrated the Bonapartes; and Spain and Mexico, and scores of States of lesser note, have welcomed and spurned the same rulers, and created and overthrew the same dynasties. For the matchless progress of enlight ened rule during the last century, the lic trust. They are the creation of our people world is indebted to England and America. under our exceptional system, that educates Parent and child, though separated by all and advances those who are most emiviolence and estranged in their sympathies nent and faithful; and they are, from generaeven to the latest days, have been co- tion to generation, the enduring monuments workers in the great cause of perfecting and of the Republic. We need no triumphal strengthening liberal government. Each arches, or towering columns, or magnificent has been too prone to hope and labor for temples to record our achievements. Every the decline or subordination of the other, patriotic memory bears in perpetual freshbut they both have thereby "buildedness the inscriptions of our noblest deeds, wiser than they knew." Their ceaseless and every devoted heart quickens its pulsarivalry for the approving judgment of tions at the contemplation of the power civilization and for the development of the and safety of government of the people. noblest attributes of a generous and en-In every trial, in peace and in war, we during authority, have made them vastly have created our warriors, our pacificators better and wiser than either would have and our great teachers of the country's been without the other. We have in-sublime duties and necessities. It is not herited her supreme sanctity for law, and always our most polished scholars, or our thus bounded our liberties by conservative ripest statesmen who have the true inspirestraints upon popular passions, until the ration of the loyal leader. Ten years ago sober judgment of the people can correct one of the most illustrious scholars and them. She has, however unwillingly, orators of our age, was called to dedicate yielded to the inspiration of our enlarged the memorable battle field of Gettysburg, freedom and advanced with hesitating as the resting place of our martyred dead. steps toward the amelioration of her less In studied grandeur he told the story of favored classes. She maintains the form the heroism of the soldiers of the Repuband splendor of royalty, but no monarch, lic, and in chaste and eloquent passages he no ministry, no House of Lords, can now plead the cause of the imperiled and bleeddefy the Commoners of the English people. ing Union. The renowned orator has The breath of disapproval coming from the passed away, and his oration is forgotten. popular branch of the government, dis- There was present on that occasion, the solves a cabinet or compels an appeal to chosen ruler and leader of the people. He the country. A justly beloved Queen, un- was untutored in eloquence, and a stranger vexed by the cares of State, is the symbol to the art of playing upon the hopes or of the majesty of English law, and there grief of the nation. He was the sincere, monarchy practically ends. We have the unfaltering guardian of the unity of the reared a nobler structure, more delicate in States, and his utterance, brief and units framework, more exquisite in its har-studied, inspired and strengthened every mony, and more imposing in its progress. patriotic impulse, and made a great people Its beneficence would be its weakness with renew their great work with the holiest any other people than our own. Solon devotion. As he turned from the dead to summed up the history of many peoples, the living, he gave the text of liberty for when, in answer to the question whether all time, when he declared: "It is rather he had given the Athenians the best of for us to be here dedicated to the great laws, he said: "The best they were capa-task remaining before us,--that from these ble of receiving!" Even England with honored dead we take increased devotion her marked distinctions of rank, and to the cause for which they here gave the widely divided and unsympathetic classes, could not entrust her administration to popular control, without inviting convulsive discord and probable disintegration. Here we confide the enactment and execution of our laws to the immediate representatives of the people; but executives, and judicial tribunals, and conservative Neither birth, nor circumstance, nor legislative branches, are firmly established, power, can command the devotion of our to receive the occasional surges of popular people. Our revolutions in enlightened error, as the rock-ribbed shore makes sentiment, have been the creation of all harmless the waves of the tempest. We have no antagonism of rank or caste; no patent of nobility save that of merit, and the Republic has no distinction that may not be won by the humblest of her citizens. Our illustrious patriots, statesmen, and chieftains are cherished as household gods. They have not in turn been applauded and condemned, unless they have betrayed pub last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." the varied agencies of our free government, and the judgments of the nation have passed into history as marvels of justice. We have wreathed our military and civil heroes with the greenest laurels. In the strife of ambition, some have felt keenly what they deemed the ingratitude of the Republic; but in their disappointment, they could not understand that the highest homage of a free people is not measured of people, are the tireless teachers of our by place or titled honors. Clay was none destiny. Away in the forefront of every the less beloved, and Webster none the less struggle, are to be found the masters who revered, because their chief ambition was brave passion and prejudice and interest, not realized. Scott was not less the "Great in the perfection of our nationality. Captain of the Age," because he was smit- Our free press reaching into almost every ten in his efforts to attain the highest civil hamlet of the land; our colleges now reared distinction. But a few months ago two in every section; our schools with open men of humblest opportunities and oppo- doors to all; our churches teaching every site characteristics, were before us as rival faith, with the protection of the law; our candidates for our first office. One had citizens endowed with the sacred right of been a great teacher, who through patient freedom of speech and action; our railyears of honest and earnest effort, had roads spanning the continent, climbing our made his impress upon the civilization of mountains, and stretching into our valleys; every clime. He was the defender of the our telegraphs making every community oppressed, and the unswerving advocate of the centre of the world's daily recordsequal rights for all mankind. Gradually these are the agencies which are omnipohis labors ripened, but the fruits were to tent in the expression of our national purbe gathered through the flame of battle, poses and duties. Thus directed and mainand he was unskilled in the sword. An- tained, our free government has braved other had to come with his brave reapers foreign and domestic war, and been purified into the valley of death. He was unknown and strengthened in the crucible of conflict. to fame, and the nation trusted others who It has grown from a few feeble States east wore its stars. But he transformed despair of the Ohio wilderness, to a vast continent into hope, and defeat into victory. He of commonwealths, and forty millions of rose through tribulation and malice, by population. It has made freedom as unihis invincible courage and matchless com-versal as its authority within its vast posmand, until the fruition of his rival's sessions. The laws of inequality and caste teachings had been realized in their own, are blotted from its statutes. It reaches and their country's grandest achievement. In the race for civil trust, partisan detraction swept mercilessly over both, and two men who had written the proudest records of their age, in their respective spheres of public duty, were assailed as incompetent and unworthy. Both taught peace. One dared more for hastened reconciliation, forgiveness and brotherhood. The other triumphed, and vindicated his rival and himself by calling the insurgent to share the honors of the Republic. Soon after the strife was ended, they met at the gates of the "City of the Silent," and the victor, as chief of the nation, paid the nation's sincere homage to its untitled, but most beloved and lamented citizen. Had the victor been the vanquished, the lustre of his crown would have been undimmed in the judgment of our people or of history. Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatness. The public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties. When we search for the agencies of the great epochs in our national progress, we look not to the accidents of place. Unlike all other governments, ours is guided supremely by intelligent and educated public convictions, and those who are clothed with authority, are but the exponents of the popular will. Herein is the source of safety and advancement of our free institutions. On every hand, in the ranks the golden slopes of the Pacific with its beneficence, and makes beauty and plenty in the valleys of the mountains on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. From the cool lakes of the north, to the sunny gulfs of the South, and from the eastern seas to the waters that wash the lands of the Pagan, a homogeneous people obey one constitution, and are devoted to one country. Nor have its agencies and influences been limited to our own boundaries. The whole accessible world has felt its power, and paid tribute to its excellence. Europe has been convulsed from centre to circumference by the resistless throbbings of oppressed peoples for the liberty they cannot know and could not maintain. The proud Briton has imitated his wayward but resolute child, and now rules his own throne. France has sung the Marseillaise, her anthem of freedom, and waded through blood in ill-directed struggles for her disenthralment. The scattered tribes of the Fatherland now worship at the altar of German unity, with a liberalized Empire. The sad song of the serf is no longer heard from the children of the Czar. Italy, dismembered and tempest tossed through centuries, again ordains her laws in the Eternal City, under a monarch of her choice. The throne of Ferdinand and Isabella has now no kingly ruler, and the inspiration of freedom has unsettled the title of despotism to the Spanish sceptre. The trained lightning flashes the lessons of our civilization to the home of the Pyramids; the land of the Heathen has our teachers in its desolate places, and the God of Day sets not upon the boundless triumphs of our go-earth. You cannot make it by passing vernment of the people. resolutions in a political convention. "The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this Government should protect every citizen, at home and abroad; who knows that any governRobert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois, ment that will not defend its defenders, In the National Republican Convention at Cincinnati, June, and protect its protectors, is a disgrace to 1876, in nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidency. the map of the world. They demand a "Massachusetts may be satisfied with man who believes in the eternal separation the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so and divorcement of Church and School. am I; but if any man nominated by this They demand a man whose political repuconvention cannot carry the State of Mas-tation is spotless as a star; but they do not sachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of this convention cannot carry the grand old Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory. "The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved political opinions. They demand a reformer after as well as before the election. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest and best sense—a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs, with the wants of the people; with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the relations of this government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of each and every department of this Government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it. The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire -greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil. "This money has to be dug out of the demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who has, in full, heaped and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications, is the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party-James G. Blaine. Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who is the grandest combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine. "For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there can be no defeat. "This is a grand year-a year filled with the recollections of the Revolution; filled with proud and tender memories of the past; with the sacred legends of liberty; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm ; a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field; a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander; for the man who has snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion; for the man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat. "Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress, and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor. "For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader now, is as though an army should desert their general upon the field of battle. "James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and without remaining free. "Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great Republic, the only Republic that ever existed upon this earth; in the name of all her defenders and of all | perilous sixteen years of the nation's hisher supporters; in the name of all her sol- tory. diers living; in the name of all her soldiers "Never having had 'a policy to enforce dead upon the field of battle, and in the against the will of the people,' he never name of those who perished in the skeleton betrayed a cause or a friend, and the peoclutch of famine at Andersonville and ple will never betray or desert him. ViliLibby, whose sufferings he so vividly re-fied and reviled, truthlessly aspersed by members, Illinois-Illinois nominates for numberless presses, not in other lands, but the next President of this country, that in his own, the assaults upon him have prince of parliamentarians-that leader of strengthened and seasoned his hold upon leaders-James G. Blaine." Roscoe Conkling, of New York, 1880, nominating Ulysses S. Grant for the Presidency. the public heart. The ammunition of calumny has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once, its force is spent, and General Grant's name will glitter as a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish it will have mouldered in forgotten graves and their memories and epitaphs have vanished utterly. "Never elated by success, never depressed by adversity, he has ever in peace, as in war, shown the very genius of common sense. The terms he prescribed for Lee's surrender foreshadowed the wisest principles and prophecies of true reconstruction. And the famous Apple tree." Obeying instructions I should never dare to disregard, I rise in behalf of the State of New York to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly win. The election before us will be the Austerlitz of American politics. It will decide whether for years to come the "Victor in the greatest of modern wars, country will be 'Republican or Cossack.' he quickly signalized his aversion to war The need of the hour is a candidate who and his love of peace by an arbitration of can carry doubtful States, North and South; international disputes which stands as the and believing that he more surely than any wisest and most majestic example of its other can carry New York against any op- kind in the world's diplomacy. When ponent, and carry not only the North, but inflation, at the height of its popularity several States of the South, New York is and frenzy, had swept both houses of Confor Ulysses S. Grant. He alone of living gress, it was the veto of Grant which, sinRepublicans has carried New York as a gle and alone, overthrew expansion and Presidential candidate. Once he carried cleared the way for specie resumption. To it even according to a Democratic count, him, immeasurably more than to any and twice he carried it by the people's other man, is due the fact that every paper vote, and he is stronger now. The Repub- dollar is as good as gold. With him as lican party with its standard in his hand, our leader we shall have no defensive camis stronger now than in 1868 or 1872. paign, no apologies or explanations to Never defeated in war or in peace, his make. The shafts and arrows have all name is the most illustrious borne by any been aimed at him and lie broken and living man; his services attest his great- harmless at his feet. Life, liberty and ness, and the country knows them by heart. property will find safeguard in him. When His fame was born not alone of things he said of the black man in Florida, written and said, but of the arduous great-Wherever I am they may come also,' he ness of things done, and dangers and meant that, had he the power to help it, emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such confidence and trust. Standing on the highest eminence of human distinction, and having filled all lands with his renown, modest, firm, simple and self-poised, he has seen not only the titled but the poor and the lowly in the utmost ends of the world rise and uncover before him. He has studied the needs and defects of many systems of government, and he comes back a better American than ever, with a wealth of knowledge and experience added to the hard common sense which so conspicuously distinguished him in all the fierce light that beat upon him throughout the most eventful, trying and the poor dwellers in the cabins of the South should not be driven in terror from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their murdered dead. When he refused to receive Denis Kearney he meant that lawlessness and communism, although it should dictate laws to a whole city, would everywhere meet a foe in him, and, popular or unpopular, he will hew to the line of right, let the chips fly where they may. "His integrity, his common sense, his courage and his unequaled experience are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument against accepting them would amaze Solomon. He thought there could be nothing new under the sun Having tried Grant twice and found him faith |