ter and bloody persecution.

During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the
agonized spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter
his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the
billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this
should be more felt and feared by some, and should divide opinion as to
measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference
of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same
principle. We are all republicans; we are all federalists. If there
be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, or to change its
republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety
with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free
to combat it.

I know, indeed, that some honest men have feared that a republican
government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough.
But would not the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful
experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm
on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world's
best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust
not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth.
I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the law,
would fly to the standard of the law; would meet invasions of public
order as his own personal concern.

Sometimes, it is said, that man cannot be trusted with the government of
himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have
we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer
this question. Let us, then, pursue with courage and confidence our
own federal and republican principle, our attachment to union and
representative government.

Kindly separated by nature, and a wide ocean, from the exterminating
havoc of one quarter of the globe, too high-minded to endure the
degradation of the others; possessing a chosen country with room enough
for all to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a
dull sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to
the acquisition of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our
fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and
their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed,
indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcati