certain relations as states, irrespective of population. But in the House of Representatives, where the people are most nearly represented, there is every ten years a power to rectify any inequality of states. Let us be thankful for a peaceably ordained constitutional revolution. It moves like the earth in its orbit, with happy alternation of grateful night, prolific day, and benignant seasons. If the smaller states complain of being overbalanced in the House, we must remember that in the Senate and the Electoral, College their equilibrium is maintained, substantially and potentially. Let them bow gracefully to the inevitable. If larger states, or any number of states, lose a member of Congress each, the Senate by the terms of the Constitution is unalterable for them also, and their voice is that of an equal and of a power in this body. If in other states there is to be an increase, let us proudly remember that it is the increase of the country and of the popular branch which has not always kept pace with the senatorial increase. It is the growth of our system in all its far-reaching influences by a law greater than the Constitution. These changes should not be left to chance for their representation. So that whether the states be great or small, West or East, North or South, their relative equality and equal dignity are vindicated. "Self-reverent each, and reverencing each; distinct in individuality; but like each other, even as those who love." There is in the legislative organisms of no other country any semblance to the American system of enumeration and popular representation. Opulence, dignities, titles, vassalage, municipalities, and classes have had their obsequious representatives in all ages and countries, and now and then, by some wild convulsion, the common people, in a fierce, unequal way, have had their will expressed in legislation; but as a general rule the people have been unrepresented, either because of an unfair local distribution of the representation or by the suppression of the franchise. Our Federal system of representation is in every sense republican in fact, form, and spirit. What is representation in a political sense? Rousseau has denied its legitimacy as an agent of society; Guizot combats the theory that individual will is the source of sovereignty, and holds to the doctrine that no individual will has in itself any right to power except it conform to reason. These metaphysical distinctions have been spun into such a thin fibre that by one side it has been held that when you have supplied yourself with a representative you are no longer free. You have lost your sovereignty over your will, and given it a master. The other side retorts: "Your personal will is insufficient for order and security. You employ a servant. He is your slave. You give him suffrage, only to execute your sovereign will." So that, whether we individually consent to that which our deputy does or omits, we are bound by his act as representing us. Even the minority, by the theory of our system, impliedly consents to the will of the majority, and thus there is practical unanimity. This is the refinement of our system. ' But it may be asked whether with this popular basis and its grand results, we have not the same greed for gain, ambition to excel, love of rule, desire for intrigue, and play of unruly prejudice, jealousy, and passion which have made the history of other nations tragical even to their decline and fall. There can be but one answer to this question. Intelligence and morality are the only conservative elements of a republic. While we remain an intelligent, moral people, who shall compete with us in our abundant harvests, our rich balances of trade, our increase in commerce and expansion of labor, our influx of precious metals, and our inexhaustible mines of coal, iron, copper, gold, and silver. Our exportations and importations, our marvelous immigration, our stupendous inter-state communications and their incomes and outgoes by rail, canal, lake, river, and sea, our inventive faculty, with its miracles of manufacture, and above all and beyond all, our movement westward from ever-renewing centres of a restless population, which in a century has added fifty millions of souls to our active energies, are unparalleled in the history of nations. What is the vitalizing and ennobling principle of our civilization, and the warrant for its preservation? That warrant is in the virtue, schools, and intelligence of the whole people, who, receiving their broad inheritance endowed in the eons past by geology and its changes with an opulence of fertility and wealth, have transmuted it beyond the dreams of alchemy into manifold and magnificent values, and spread their domain since 1790 from a little strip along the Atlantic into continental proportions, reaching from sea to sea. That principle of civilization is our representative system, which strikes no name, however humble or dependent, from the peerage of the American Republic. England may boast of her rule in Asia, Africa, and Ireland, and proudly echo the praise which her laureate lavishes on her, as a land of settled government, of just and old renown, and of freedom broadening slowly from precedent to precedent; but she has no popular representation in her Parliament founded on the equal rights of all the people. It was left to her American colonies, a century ago, in this new hemisphere, by a written constitution, to erect a muniment, high and splendid, around the temple of liberty, and to guard it with a unity and force which the division and variety made by mountain and river, and the strong passions of hostile armies, could neither sever nor overcome. Within that muniment, our composite society is assured of protection, stability, and progress. In rearing it every one has builded over against his own house, as in the days of dismantled Jerusalem; so that through the whole mass of our living people, freedom broadens decennially, not from precedent to precedent, but like the bole of the oak, by its inner growth drawn from the soil, sun, and sky, into an intense robust life, which has defied the tempests of the past century, and under God's guidance will defy the storms of centuries to come! THE MUNIMENTS OF PUBLIC LIBERTY. 699 It is nearly four hundred years since Columbus set in the forehead of his time the jewels of Isabella, the Catholic. The people whom she ruled saw the sails of his caravel expand under favoring breezes from the Andalusian strand, to find a new continent, and found a new empire! Then the red man held undisputed barbaric sway over the vast regions now embraced within our limits. Here, since, arose institutions whose attractive forces created, from out of the loins of the Old World, a nation of freemen. Since then, like the oak, our greatness has expanded, ring on ring. We have spread our boughs from sea to sea! Our country, with its institutions of benevolence and learning, its wealth, splendor, commerce, and liberties, has become the cynosure of all eyes and the refuge of all lands. It is a fitting tribute to our position, history, and freedom, that the genius of republican France is, as we write, sending to us for exaltation within the waters of our great metropolis, the image of Liberty lifting up a lighted torch, as a beacon of promise and symbol of enlightenment to all who traverse the broad seas and seek our asylum. It is our duty to see that the emblem loses nothing of its splendid significance. May it never be said to us, as De Tocqueville said to France : "Are your principles losing their force by your example? Does your application of them lead the world to doubt their truth? Are your regenerating principles-the glory and most precious portion of your history-leading the nations to a happier future, or dragging them down after you in moral degradation ?" With vestal vigilance let these principles be ever watched! We need not repair to the golden urns of other skies to re-illume the light which shines like the stars upon our ensign. The youthful, exultant, and defiant spirit of Freedom here enshrined and consecrated fills the land with a common sentiment concerning the Republic, which is the essence of patriotism, and will shed around the splendid gift of our sister republic of the Old World, not the lurid glare which leads astray, but an aureole "only not divine," whose effulgence will make glad the struggling people of all lands, aspiring to a better future. MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, SHOWING THE OLD STATES SHADED DARK; FLORIDA, AND ALL THE VAST TERRITORY WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, ACQUIRED BY THE GOVERNMENT WHILE UNDER DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION, SHADED LIGHT. INDEX. ABOLITIONISTS, their motto, 50. | tion of the preamble of the Abolition of slavery, constitu- cate of measures to allay Member committee of thirty- As minister to Great Britain Adams, J. H., member of South sion, 1860, 110. Adams, John, causes of his de- feat for the presidency by Course in France respecting Adams Samuel, statue of, 26. Treaty commission, 1860, 116. Part of third military district Registration in, 513. Constitution, provisions of, Conditions of admission of, to Alcorn, James L., Republican | Anderson, Thomas L., member candidate for governor of His idea of state sovereignty, Aldrich, Cyrus, member Thirty- sixth Congress, 90. 51. "American" party, 50. sault of Fort Fisher, 212, 313. 527. Elected governor of Missis- Course as governor of Mis- osition, June 9, 1864, 316. Classes excepted, 346, 347. President Johnson's plan of, Vicissitudes of the question Position of Mr. Blaine re- Established by public senti- Anderson, Robert, abandons Fort Moultrie and occupies Thirty-sixth Congress, 96. tion, the original object of The law of 1882 respecting House committee, 1872, on Delegates sent to Southern New state government of, re- President Lincoln's plan for Ordinance of secession an- Destitution of her people in Amnesty act of, 439. Part of the fourth military of, forbidden, April, 1867, to Registration in, 534. Convention and constitution, Fraud at ratification of con- Surrendered by military com- Legislation of, 1869, respect- Constitution of, 1874, 540. Congress for repeal of laws |