But As Government Is A Wide Affair,
Spreading Itself Gradually, And Growing In Virtue Or In Vice From
Small Beginnings - From Seeds Slow To Produce Their Fruits - It Is
Much Easier To Discern The Incidence Of The Punishment Than The
Perpetration Of The Fault.
Government goes astray by degrees, or
sins by the absence of that wisdom which should teach rulers how to
make progress as progress is made by those whom they rule.
The
fault may be absolutely negative and have spread itself over
centuries; may be, and generally has been, attributable to dull,
good men; but not the less does the punishment come at a blow. The
rebellion exists and cannot be put down - will put down all that
opposes it; but the government is not the less bound to make its
fight. That is the punishment that comes on governing men or on
governing a people that govern not well or not wisely.
As Mr. Motley says in the paper to which I have alluded, "No man, on
either side of the Atlantic, with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins,
will dispute the right of a people, or of any portion of a people,
to rise against oppression, to demand redress of grievances, and in
case of denial of justice to take up arms to vindicate the sacred
principle of liberty. Few Englishmen or Americans will deny that
the source of government is the consent of the governed, or that
every nation has the right to govern itself according to its will.
When the silent consent is changed to fierce remonstrance,
revolution is impending. The right of revolution is indisputable.
It is written on the whole record of our race, British and American
history is made up of rebellion and revolution. Hampden, Pym, and
Oliver Cromwell; Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels."
Then comes the question whether South Carolina and the Gulf States
had so suffered as to make rebellion on their behalf justifiable or
reasonable; or if not, what cause had been strong enough to produce
in them so strong a desire for secession, a desire which has existed
for fully half the term through which the United States has existed
as a nation, and so firm a resolve to rush into rebellion with the
object of accomplishing that which they deemed not to be
accomplished on other terms?
It must, I think, be conceded that the Gulf States have not suffered
at all by their connection with the Northern States; that in lieu of
any such suffering, they owe all their national greatness to the
Northern States; that they have been lifted up, by the commercial
energy of the Atlantic States and by the agricultural prosperity of
the Western States, to a degree of national consideration and
respect through the world at large which never could have belonged
to them standing alone. I will not trouble my readers with
statistics which few would care to follow; but let any man of
ordinary every-day knowledge turn over in his own mind his present
existing ideas of the wealth and commerce of New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and compare them
with his ideas as to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile,
Richmond, and Memphis.
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