Garibaldi has had some experience, and knows the difference between efforts to make a people free, and the warlike and apparently successful efforts of tyranny; and he knows that a failure, even temporary, does not necessarily secure to force, and fraud, and violence a permanent success. He knows the difference between restoring a misguided people to a free Government, and putting down the efforts of a people to get up a free Government. He knows those are two different things; and, if the war be not shortly ended, as he thinks it will be, then he deems it right for him, fresh from the glories of securing the liberties of Italy, to assist in maintaining—what? Despotism? No! the liberties of America.
One of the learned counsel, who addressed you in a strain of very effective and persuasive eloquence, charmed us all by the grace of his allusion to a passage in classical history, and recalled your attention to the fact that, when the States of Greece which had warred against Athens, anticipating her downfall beneath the prowess of their arms, met to determine her fate, and when vindictive Thebes and envious Corinth counseled her destruction, the genius of the Athenian Sophocles, by the recital of the chorus of the Electra, disarmed this cruel purpose, by reviving the early glories of united Greece. And the counsel asked that no voice should be given to punish harshly these revolted States, if they should be conquered.
The voice of Sophocles in the chorus of the Electra, and those glorious memories of the early union, were produced to bring back into the circle of the old confederation the erring and rebellious Attica. So, too, what shall we find in the memories of the Revolution, or in the eloquence with which we have been taught to revere them, that will not urge us all, by every duty to the past, to the present, and to the future, to do what we can, whenever a duty is reposed in us, to sustain the Government in its rightful assertion of authority and in the maintenance of its power? Let me ask your attention to what has been said by the genius of Webster on so great a theme as the memory of Washington, bearing directly on all these questions of union, of glory, of hope, and of duty, which are involved in this inquiry. See whether, from the views thus invoked, there will not follow the same influence as from the chorus of the Electra, for the preservation, the protection, the restoration of every portion of what once was, and now is, and, let us hope, ever shall be, our common country.
On the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the birthday of Washington, at the national Capital, in 1832, Mr. Webster, by the invitation of men in public station as well as of the citizens of the place, delivered an oration, about which I believe the common judgment of his countrymen does not differ from what is known to have been his own idea, that it was the best presentation of his views and feelings which, in the long career of his rhetorical triumphs, he had had the opportunity to make.
No man ever thought or spoke of the character of Washington, and of the great part in human affairs which he played, without knowing and feeling that the crowning glory of all his labors in the field and in the council, and the perpetual monument to his fame, if his fame shall be perpetual, would be found in the establishment of the American Union under the American Constitution. All the prowess of the war, all the spirit of the Revolution, all the fortitude of the effort, all the self-denial of the sacrifice of that period, were for nothing, and worse than nothing, if the result and consummation of the whole were to be but a Government that contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and existed only at the caprice and whim of whatever part of the people should choose to deny its rightfulness or seek to overthrow its authority. In pressing that view, Mr. Webster thus attracts the attention of his countrymen to the great achievement in human affairs which the establishment of this Government has proved to be, and thus illustrates the character of Washington:
"It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington that, having been intrusted, in revolutionary times, with the supreme military command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the first Government in which an attempt was to be made, on a large scale, to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written Constitution and of a pure representative principle. A Government was to be established, without a throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges; and this Government, instead of being a democracy, existing and acting within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast country, of different climates, interests and habits, and of various communions of our common Christian faith. The experiment certainly was entirely new. A popular Government of this extent, it was evident, could be framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct itself to political renown and glory. * * * * *
"* * * * I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole world was and is interested in the result of this experiment. And is it not so? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the career which this Government is running is among the most attractive objects to the civilized world? Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment that love of liberty and that understanding of its true principles, which are flying over the whole earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really and truly of American origin? * * * * *
"* * * * Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free Government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty, is to show, in our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its longevity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers. The world at this moment is regarding us with a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep and awful anxiety is to learn whether free States may be stable as well as free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth established, illustrated, and brought into practice in the country of Washington.
"Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great Western Sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world? * * * * *
"* * * * The political prosperity which this country has attained and which it now enjoys, has been acquired mainly through the instrumentality of the present Government. While this agent continues, the capacity of attaining to still higher degrees of prosperity exists also. We have, while this lasts, a political life capable of beneficial exertion, with power to resist or overcome misfortunes, to sustain us against the ordinary accidents of human affairs, and to promote, by active efforts, every public interest. But dismemberment strikes at the very being which preserves these faculties. It would lay its rude and ruthless hand on this great agent itself. It would sweep away, not only what we possess, but all power of regaining lost, or acquiring new, possessions. It would leave the country, not only bereft of its prosperity and happiness, but without limbs, or organs, or faculties, by which to exert itself hereafter in the pursuit of that prosperity and happiness.