e no reason why it should not
be done. The change has been constant already from the very
rudest forms to the forms which we now have, and which I am sorry
to say, are sufficiently rude to disgrace the civilization of the
age. Why not further amelioration and adaptation? Are we to have
no progress in the modes of government among men? Are we and
future generations to be ever imprisoned in the uncouth
alternative of monarchical or democratic forms as they now
obtain? I can not believe it. For five years past we have had
revolution enough among us to satisfy even the most conservative
that the present is no ultimatum, either of form or substance in
political or social affairs. I will go further and venture to
say, that there are now seething underneath all the forms of this
Government, revolutions still more striking than any one of us
have yet witnessed. Beneath all these methods and appliances of
administrations and controls among men, I believe there is under
our very feet a heaving, unsteady ocean of aroused questioning in
which many modes now practiced will sink to rise no more, and out
of which other adaptations will emerge that will render far more
perfect the reflection of the will of the people; that will
perhaps represent minorities as well as majorities; that will
disarm corruptions by dispensing with party organizations. It is
the very witching hour of change.

And, sir, I do not dread change. Why should we? Is not change the
primal condition on which all life is permitted to exist? Change
is the very essence of all things pure, the sign and token of the
divinity that is within us, and conservatism _per se_ is
infidelity against the ordination of God. When, therefore, we see
such change in all things that are around us, in fashions and
customs and laws and recognitions and intellectualities, even to
the supremest generalizations of science, in all things save the
elemental principles of our being and by consequence of our
rights, why shall we say that these forms into which we have cast
administration and government, shall not obey the great law of
development and take upon themselves ameliorations better suited
to the changing society of mankind, to the wants of a more
truthful representation, to the participation by all in the