l be
difficult for party organization or party denunciation to suppress the
effective utterance of that general wish. There are unhappy differences,
it is true, about the fit person to be successor to the present
incumbent in the chief magistracy; and it is possible that this disunion
may, in the end, defeat the will of the majority. But so far as we agree
together, let us act together. Wherever our sentiments concur, let our
hands co-operate. If we cannot at present agree who should be
President, we are at least agreed who ought not to be. I fully believe,
Sir, that gratifying intelligence is already on the wing. While we are
yet deliberating in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania is voting. This week,
she elects her members to the next Congress. I doubt not the result of
that election will show an important change in public sentiment in that
State; nor can I doubt that the great States adjoining her, holding
similar constitutional principles and having similar interests, will
feel the impulse of the same causes which affect her. The people of the
United States, by a countless majority, are attached to the
Constitution. If they shall be convinced that it is in danger, they will
come to its rescue, and will save it. It cannot be destroyed, even now,
if THEY will undertake its guardianship and protection.

But suppose, Sir, there was less hope than there is, would that
consideration weaken the force of our obligations? Are we at a post
which we are at liberty to desert when it becomes difficult to hold it?
May we fly at the approach of danger? Does our fidelity to the
Constitution require no more of us than to enjoy its blessings, to bask
in the prosperity which it has shed around us and our fathers? and are
we at liberty to abandon it in the hour of its peril, or to make for it
but a faint and heartless struggle, for the want of encouragement and
the want of hope? Sir, if no State come to our succor, if everywhere
else the contest should be given up, here let it be protracted to the
last moment. Here, where the first blood of the Revolution was shed, let
the last effort be made for that which is the greatest blessing obtained
by the Revolution, a free and united government. Sir, in our endeavors
to maintain our existing forms of government, we are acting not for
ourselves alone, but for the great cause of constitutional liberty all
over the globe. We are trustees holding a sacred treasure, in which all
the lovers of freedom hav