ives rise to opposing parties. Every
man, then, in casting his vote for members of the Legislature, needs to
understand what important questions will be likely to come before that
branch of the government for settlement, to have examined them in their
various bearings, and to have deliberately made up his opinion in
relation to the interests involved, in order to vote understandingly;
otherwise he will be as likely to oppose as to promote, not only the
welfare of the state, but his own most cherished interests.

The same remark that has been made in relation to the legislative
department will apply to both the judicial and executive, and to the
general government as well as to the several state governments. When the
appointed day arrives for deciding the various questions of state and
national policy which divide men into opposing parties, there can be no
delay. These various and conflicting questions must be decided, whether
much or little preparation has been made, or none at all. And, what is
most extraordinary, each voter helps to decide every question which
agitates the community as much by not voting as by voting. If the
question is so vast or so complicated that any one has not time to
examine and make up his mind in relation to it, or if any one is too
conscientious to act from conjecture in cases of magnitude, and
therefore stays from the polls, another, who has no scruples about
acting ignorantly, or from caprice, or malevolence, votes, and, in the
absence of the former, decides the question against the right.

However simple our government may be in theory, it has proved, in
practice, the most complex government on earth. More questions for
legislative interposition, and for judicial exposition and construction,
have already arisen under it, ten to one, than have arisen during the
same length of time under any other form of government in Christendom.
We are a Union of thirty states; a great nation composed of thirty
separate nations; and even beyond these, the confederacy is responsible
for the fate of vast territories, with their increasing population, and
of numerous Indian tribes. Among the component states, there is the
greatest variety of customs, institutions, and religions. Then we have
the deeper inbred differences of language and ancestry among us, our
population being made up of the lineage of all nations. Our industrial
pursuits, also, are various; and, with a great natural diversity of soil
and c