olution were supposed
to exist even by the wise and good, and not only did unfriendly or
speculative theorists anticipate for us the fate of past republics, but
the fears of many an honest patriot overbalanced his sanguine hopes.
Look back on these forebodings, not hastily but reluctantly made, and
see how in every instance they have completely failed.

An imperfect experience during the struggles of the Revolution was
supposed to warrant the belief that the people would not bear the
taxation requisite to discharge an immense public debt already incurred
and to pay the necessary expenses of the Government. The cost of two
wars has been paid, not only without a murmur, but with unequaled
alacrity. No one is now left to doubt that every burden will be
cheerfully borne that may be necessary to sustain our civil institutions
or guard our honor or welfare. Indeed, all experience has shown that
the willingness of the people to contribute to these ends in cases of
emergency has uniformly outrun the confidence of their representatives.

In the early stages of the new Government, when all felt the imposing
influence as they recognized the unequaled services of the first
President, it was a common sentiment that the great weight of his
character could alone bind the discordant materials of our Government
together and save us from the violence of contending factions. Since his
death nearly forty years are gone. Party exasperation has been often
carried to its highest point; the virtue and fortitude of the people
have sometimes been greatly tried; yet our system, purified and enhanced
in value by all it has encountered, still preserves its spirit of free
and fearless discussion, blended with unimpaired fraternal feeling.

The capacity of the people for self-government, and their
willingness, from a high sense of duty and without those exhibitions
of coercive power so generally employed in other countries, to submit
to all needful restraints and exactions of municipal law, have also
been favorably exemplified in the history of the American States.
Occasionally, it is true, the ardor of public sentiment, outrunning the
regular progress of the judicial tribunals or seeking to reach cases
not denounced as criminal by the existing law, has displayed itself
in a manner calculated to give pain to the friends of free government
and to encourage the hopes of those who wish for its overthrow. These
occurrences, however, have been far less