civil
authority. Wherever this lesson is not both learned and practised, there
can be no political freedom. Absurd, preposterous is it, a scoff and a
satire on free forms of constitutional liberty, for frames of government
to be prescribed by military leaders, and the right of suffrage to be
exercised at the point of the sword.

Making all allowance for situation and climate, it cannot be doubted by
intelligent minds, that the difference now existing between North and
South America is justly attributable, in a great degree, to political
institutions in the Old World and in the New. And how broad that
difference is! Suppose an assembly, in one of the valleys or on the side
of one of the mountains of the southern half of the hemisphere, to be
held, this day, in the neighborhood of a large city;--what would be the
scene presented? Yonder is a volcano, flaming and smoking, but shedding
no light, moral or intellectual. At its foot is the mine, sometimes
yielding, perhaps, large gains to capital, but in which labor is
destined to eternal and unrequited toil, and followed only by penury and
beggary. The city is filled with armed men; not a free people, armed and
coming forth voluntarily to rejoice in a public festivity, but hireling
troops, supported by forced loans, excessive impositions on commerce, or
taxes wrung from a half-fed and a half-clothed population. For the great
there are palaces covered with gold; for the poor there are hovels of
the meanest sort. There is an ecclesiastical hierarchy, enjoying the
wealth of princes; but there are no means of education for the people.
Do public improvements favor intercourse between place and place? So far
from this, the traveller cannot pass from town to town, without danger,
every mile, of robbery and assassination. I would not overcharge or
exaggerate this picture; but its principal features are all too truly
sketched.

And how does it contrast with the scene now actually before us? Look
round upon these fields; they are verdant and beautiful, well
cultivated, and at this moment loaded with the riches of the early
harvest. The hands which till them are those of the free owners of the
soil, enjoying equal rights, and protected by law from oppression and
tyranny. Look to the thousand vessels in our sight, filling the harbor,
or covering the neighboring sea. They are the vehicles of a profitable
commerce, carried on by men who know that the profits of their hardy
enterprise, wh