ow great institutions
are often based on compromise,--not a mean and craven sentiment, as some
think, but a spirit of conciliation and magnanimity, without which there
can be no union or stability. Take the English Church, which has
survived the revolutions of human thought for three centuries, which has
been a great bulwark against infidelity, and has proved itself to be
dear to the heart of the nation, and the source of boundless blessings
and proud recollections,--it was a compromise, half-way indeed between
Rome and Geneva, but nevertheless a great and beneficent organization on
the whole. Take the English constitution itself, one of the grandest
triumphs of human reason and experience,--it was only gradually formed
by a series of bloodless concessions. Take the Roman constitution, under
which the whole civilized world was brought into allegiance,--it was a
series of concessions granted by the aristocratic classes. Most
revolutions and wars end in compromise after the means of fighting are
expended. Most governments are based on expediency rather than abstract
principles. The actions of governments are necessarily expedients,--the
wisest policy in view of all the circumstances. Even such an
uncompromising logician as Saint Paul accepted some customs which we
think were antagonistic to the spirit of his general doctrines. He was a
great temperance man, but recommended a little wine to Timothy for the
stomach's sake. And Moses, too, the great founder of the Jewish polity,
permitted polygamy because of the hardness of men's hearts. So the
fathers of the Constitution preferred a constitution with slavery to no
constitution at all. Had each of those illustrious men persisted in his
own views, we should have had only an autonomy of States instead of the
glorious Union, which in spite of storms stands unshaken to-day.

I cannot dwell on those protracted debates, which lasted four months, or
on the minor questions which demanded attention,--all centering in the
great question whether the government should be federative or national.
But the ablest debater of the convention was Hamilton, and his speeches
were impressive and convincing. He endeavored to impress upon the minds
of the members that liberty was found neither in the rule of a few
aristocrats, nor in extreme democracy; that democracies had proved more
short-lived than aristocracies, as illustrated in Greece, Rome, and
England. He showed that extreme democracies, espe