s to point out that the
evils of the land are of a party character. Sir, we have fallen
upon evil times indeed, if the great convulsion which now shakes
the body-politic to its center is to be dealt with by such
nostrums as these. Men must look more deeply, must rise to a
higher altitude; like patriots they must confront the danger
face to face, if they hope to relieve the evils which now
disturb the peace of the land, and threaten the destruction of
our political existence.

"First of all, we must inquire what is the cause of the evils
which beset us? The diagnosis of the disease must be stated
before we are prepared to prescribe. Is it the fault of our
legislation here? If so, then it devolves upon us to correct it,
and we have the power. Is it the defect of the Federal
organization, of the fundamental law of our Union? I hold that
it is not. Our fathers, learning wisdom from the experiments of
Rome and of Greece--the one a consolidated republic, and the
other strictly a confederacy--and taught by the lessons of our
own experiment under the Confederation, came together to form a
Constitution for 'a more perfect union,' and, in my judgment,
made the best government which has ever been instituted by man.
It only requires that it should be carried out in the spirit in
which it was made, that the circumstances under which it was
made should continue, and no evil can arise under this
Government for which it has not an appropriate remedy. Then it
is outside of the Government--elsewhere than to its Constitution
or to its administration--that we are to look. Men must not
creep in the dust of partisan strife and seek to make points
against opponents as the means of evading or meeting the issues
before us. The fault is not in the form of the Government, nor
does the evil spring from the manner in which it has been
administered. Where, then, is it? It is that our fathers formed
a Government for a Union of friendly States; and though under it
the people have been prosperous beyond comparison with any other
whose career is recorded in the history of man, still that Union
of friendly States has changed its character, and sectional
hostility has been substituted for the fraternity in which the
Government was founded.

"I do not intend here to enter into a statement of grievances;