uld create another, and yet another,
of no less perfect symmetry. While the foundations are firm, there need
be no fears of the superstructure, which may be renewed again and again;
but touch the foundations, and the superstructure must crumble at once.
Those who still insist on believing that this government made the people
are fond of triumphantly pointing to the condition of the States of
Mexico, as telling the history of our own future, let our present
government be once interrupted in its functions. Are Mexicans Yankees?
Are Spaniards Anglo-Saxons? Are Catholicism and religious freedom, the
Inquisition and common schools, despotism and democracy, synonymous
terms? Could a successful republic, on our model, be at once instituted
in Africa on the assassination of the King of Timbuctoo? Have two
centuries of education nothing to do with our success, or an eternity of
ignorance with Mexican failure? Was our government a lucky guess, and
theirs an unfortunate speculation? The one lesson that America is
destined to teach the world, or to miss her destiny in failing to teach,
has with us passed into a truism, and is yet continually lost sight of;
it is the magnificent result of three thousand years of experiment: the
simple truth, that no government is so firm, so truly conservative, and
so wholly indestructible, as a government founded and dependent for
support upon the affections and good-will of a moral, intelligent, and
educated community. In our politics, we hear much of State-rights and
centralization,--of distribution of power,--of checks and balances,--of
constitutions and their construction,--of patronage and its
distribution,--of banks, of tariffs, and of trade,--all of them subjects
of moment in their sphere; but their sphere is limited. Whether they be
decided one way or the other is of comparatively little consequence:
for, however they are decided, if the people are educated and informed,
the government will go on, and the community be prosperous, be they
decided never so badly,--and if decided badly, the decision will he
reversed; but let the people become ignorant and debased, and all the
checks and balances and wise regulations which the ingenuity of man
could in centuries devise would, at best, but for a short space defer
the downfall of a republic. A well-founded republic can, then, be
destroyed only by destroying its people,--its decay need be looked for
only in the decay of their intelligence; and any f