e United States? We have tried these popular institutions in times of
great excitement and commotion, and they have stood, substantially, firm
and steady, while the fountains of the great political deep have been
elsewhere broken up; while thrones, resting on ages of prescription,
have tottered and fallen; and while, in other countries, the earthquake
of unrestrained popular commotion has swallowed up all law, and all
liberty, and all right together. Our government has been tried in peace,
and it has been tried in war, and has proved itself fit for both. It has
been assailed from without, and it has successfully resisted the shock;
it has been disturbed within, and it has effectually quieted the
disturbance. It can stand trial, it can stand assault, it can stand
adversity, it can stand every thing, but the marring of its own beauty,
and the weakening of its own strength. It can stand every thing but the
effects of our own rashness and our own folly. It can stand every thing
but disorganization, disunion, and nullification.

It is a striking fact, and as true as it is striking, that at this very
moment, among all the principal civilized states of the world, _that_
government is most secure against the danger of popular commotion which
is itself entirely popular. It seems, indeed, that the submission of
every thing to the public will, under constitutional restraints, imposed
by the people themselves, furnishes itself security that they will
desire nothing wrong.

Certain it is, that popular, constitutional liberty, as we enjoy it,
appears, in the present state of the world, as sure and stable a basis
for government to rest upon, as any government of enlightened states can
find, or does find. Certain it is, that, in these times of so much
popular knowledge, and so much popular activity, those governments which
do not admit the people to partake in their administration, but keep
them under and beneath, sit on materials for an explosion, which may
take place at any moment, and blow them into a thousand atoms.

Gentlemen, let any man who would degrade and enfeeble the national
Constitution, let any man who would nullify its laws, stand forth and
tell us what he would wish. What does he propose? Whatever he may be,
and whatever substitute he may hold forth, I am sure the people of this
country will decline his kind interference, and hold on by the
Constitution which they possess. Any one who would willingly destroy it,
I rej