e of free institutions is good government where is
the good government?--when may it be expected to begin?--how is it to
come about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical
means to a simple end--the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they
fail of its accomplishment. The tree is known by its fruit. Ours, is
bearing crab-apples.

If the body politic is constitutionally diseased, as I verily believe;
if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no remedy. The fever
must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the rest. One does not
prescribe what time alone can administer. We have put our criminal class
in power; do we suppose they will efface themselves? Will they restore
to _us_ the power of governing _them_? They must have their way and
go their length. The natural and immemorial sequence is: tyranny,
insurrection, combat. In combat everything that wears a sword has a
chance--even the right. History does not forbid us to hope. But it
forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against us. If history
teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the majority of mankind
is neither good nor wise. Where government is founded upon the public
conscience and the public intelligence the stability of States is a
dream. Nor have we any warrant for the Tennysonian faith that

"Freedom broadens slowly down
From precedent to precedent."

In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have
abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and
better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed
itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. In support of this
universal delusion there is nothing to be said; the desolate places
of the earth cry out against it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations
cover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud
and populous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of
national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history--all shall go down
to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I
submit that we are traveling it with needless haste.

But it is all right and righteous. It can be spared--this Jonah's
gourd civilization of ours. We have hardly the rudiments of a true
civilization; compared with the splendors of which we catch dim glimpses
in the fading past, ours are as an illumination of tallow candles. We
know no more than the ancients; we only know oth