Speeches in the Second and Third Sessions of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and in the Vacation

Excerpt from Speeches in the Second and Third Sessions of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and in the Vacation

The speeches and addresses in this volume cover a period of about fifteen months, including the second and third sessions of the Thirty-seventh Congress and the vacation. I have put them in this form to meet the wishes of a few friends, in justice to myself, - that my position may not be misunderstood - and in the hope, not very buoyant, that they may do good. I am painfully sensible how fragmentary and defective they are. But the principles they seek to illustrate and defend are just and true, and will weather the storm. They constitute the traditional policy of the country, a return to which is, in my judgment, its only security. That they are unpopular at this moment, does not disturb me: the more imperative is the duty of standing by and upholding them. The citizen owes to the country, in the hour of her peril, honest counsel, calmly given, but with the "love that casteth out fear." Never were freedom of thought and of the lips and pen so necessary as now. They have become, not only the most precious of rights, but the most religious of duties.

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