In what are called free governments of antiquity, we search in vain for constitutional freedom, or that liberty that subordinates passion and license to law. The refuge from the constant perils of an unrestrained Democracy was always found in despotism, and when absolutism became intolerable, the tide of passion would surge back to Democracy. The people, in mass councils, would rule Consuls, Presidents and Generals, but it was fruitful only of chaos and revolution. The victorious chieftain and the illustrious philosopher would be honored with thanksgivings to the gods for their achievements, and their banishment or death would next be demanded by the same supreme tribunal. Grand temples and columns and triumphal arches would be erected to commemorate the victories of the dominant power, and the returning waves of revolution would decree the actors and their monuments to destruction. Ambitious demagogues prostituted such mockeries of government to the basest purposes. The Olympic games of Greece became the mere instruments of unscrupulous leaders to lure the people, in the name of freedom, to oppression and degradation, and the wealth of Rome was lavishly employed to corrupt the source of popular power, and spread demoralization throughout the Republic. The debauched citizens and soldiers were inflamed by cunning and corrupt devices, against the purest and most eminent of the sincere defenders of liberty; and the vengeance of the infuriated mob, usurping the supreme power of the State, would doom to exile or to death, honest Romans who struggled for Roman freedom. Cato, the younger, Tribune of the people, and faithful to his country, took his own life to escape the reprobation of a polluted sovereignty. Cicero was Consul of the people, made so by his triumph over Cæsar. But the same people who worshipped him and to whose honor and prosperity he was devoted, banished him in disgrace, confiscated his wealth and devastated his home. Again he was recalled through a triumphal ovation, and again proscribed by the triumvirs and murdered by the soldiers of Antony. The Grecian Republic banished “Aristides the just,” and Demosthenes, the first orator of the world, who withstood the temptations of Macedonian wealth, was fined, exiled and his death decreed. He saved his country the shame of his murder by suicide. Miltiades won the plaudits of Greece for his victories, only to die in prison of wounds received in fighting her battles. Themistocles, orator, statesman and chieftain, was banished and died in exile. Pericles, once master of Athens, and who gave the world the highest attainments in Grecian arts, was deposed from military and civil authority by the people he had honored. Socrates, immortal teacher of Grecian philosophy, soldier and senator, and one of the most shining examples of public virtue, was ostracised and condemned and drank the fatal hemlock. The Republic of Carthage gave the ancients their greatest general, and as chief magistrate, he was as wise in statesmanship as he was skillful in war; but in a strange land Hannibal closed his eyes to his country’s woes by taking his own life. Nor need we confine our research to Pagan antiquity alone, for such stains upon what is called popular government. During the present century France has enthroned and banished the Bourbons, and worshiped and execrated the Bonapartes; and Spain and Mexico, and scores of States of lesser note, have welcomed and spurned the same rulers, and created and overthrew the same dynasties.
For the matchless progress of enlightened rule during the last century, the world is indebted to England and America. Parent and child, though separated by violence and estranged in their sympathies even to the latest days, have been coworkers in the great cause of perfecting and strengthening liberal government. Each has been too prone to hope and labor for the decline or subordination of the other, but they both have thereby “builded wiser than they knew.” Their ceaseless rivalry for the approving judgment of civilization and for the development of the noblest attributes of a generous and enduring authority, have made them vastly better and wiser than either would have been without the other. We have inherited her supreme sanctity for law, and thus bounded our liberties by conservative restraints upon popular passions, until the sober judgment of the people can correct them. She has, however unwillingly, yielded to the inspiration of our enlarged freedom and advanced with hesitating steps toward the amelioration of her less favored classes. She maintains the form and splendor of royalty, but no monarch, no ministry, no House of Lords, can now defy the Commoners of the English people. The breath of disapproval coming from the popular branch of the government, dissolves a cabinet or compels an appeal to the country. A justly beloved Queen, unvexed by the cares of State, is the symbol of the majesty of English law, and there monarchy practically ends. We have reared a nobler structure, more delicate in its framework, more exquisite in its harmony, and more imposing in its progress. Its beneficence would be its weakness with any other people than our own. Solon summed up the history of many peoples, when, in answer to the question whether he had given the Athenians the best of laws, he said: “The best they were capable of receiving!” Even England with her marked distinctions of rank, and widely divided and unsympathetic classes, could not entrust her administration to popular control, without inviting convulsive discord and probable disintegration. Here we confide the enactment and execution of our laws to the immediate representatives of the people; but executives, and judicial tribunals, and conservative legislative branches, are firmly established, to receive the occasional surges of popular error, as the rock-ribbed shore makes harmless the waves of the tempest. We have no antagonism of rank or caste; no patent of nobility save that of merit, and the Republic has no distinction that may not be won by the humblest of her citizens. Our illustrious patriots, statesmen, and chieftains are cherished as household gods. They have not in turn been applauded and condemned, unless they have betrayed public trust. They are the creation of our people under our exceptional system, that educates all and advances those who are most eminent and faithful; and they are, from generation to generation, the enduring monuments of the Republic. We need no triumphal arches, or towering columns, or magnificent temples to record our achievements. Every patriotic memory bears in perpetual freshness the inscriptions of our noblest deeds, and every devoted heart quickens its pulsations at the contemplation of the power and safety of government of the people. In every trial, in peace and in war, we have created our warriors, our pacificators and our great teachers of the country’s sublime duties and necessities. It is not always our most polished scholars, or our ripest statesmen who have the true inspiration of the loyal leader. Ten years ago one of the most illustrious scholars and orators of our age, was called to dedicate the memorable battle-field of Gettysburg, as the resting place of our martyred dead. In studied grandeur he told the story of the heroism of the soldiers of the Republic, and in chaste and eloquent passages he plead the cause of the imperiled and bleeding Union. The renowned orator has passed away, and his oration is forgotten. There was present on that occasion, the chosen ruler and leader of the people. He was untutored in eloquence, and a stranger to the art of playing upon the hopes or grief of the nation. He was the sincere, the unfaltering guardian of the unity of the States, and his utterance, brief and unstudied, inspired and strengthened every patriotic impulse, and made a great people renew their great work with the holiest devotion. As he turned from the dead to the living, he gave the text of liberty for all time, when he declared: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Neither birth, nor circumstance, nor power, can command the devotion of our people. Our revolutions in enlightened sentiment, have been the creation of all the varied agencies of our free government, and the judgments of the nation have passed into history as marvels of justice. We have wreathed our military and civil heroes with the greenest laurels. In the strife of ambition, some have felt keenly what they deemed the ingratitude of the Republic; but in their disappointment, they could not understand that the highest homage of a free people is not measured by place or titled honors. Clay was none the less beloved, and Webster none the less revered, because their chief ambition was not realized. Scott was not less the “Great Captain of the Age,” because he was smitten in his efforts to attain the highest civil distinction. But a few months ago two men of humblest opportunities and opposite characteristics, were before us as rival candidates for our first office. One had been a great teacher, who through patient years of honest and earnest effort, had made his impress upon the civilization of every clime. He was the defender of the oppressed, and the unswerving advocate of equal rights for all mankind. Gradually his labors ripened, but the fruits were to be gathered through the flame of battle, and he was unskilled in the sword. Another had to come with his brave reapers into the valley of death. He was unknown to fame, and the nation trusted others who wore its stars. But he transformed despair into hope, and defeat into victory. He rose through tribulation and malice, by his invincible courage and matchless command, until the fruition of his rival’s teachings had been realized in their own, and their country’s grandest achievement. In the race for civil trust, partisan detraction swept mercilessly over both, and two men who had written the proudest records of their age, in their respective spheres of public duty, were assailed as incompetent and unworthy. Both taught peace. One dared more for hastened reconciliation, forgiveness and brotherhood. The other triumphed, and vindicated his rival and himself by calling the insurgent to share the honors of the Republic. Soon after the strife was ended, they met at the gates of the “City of the Silent,” and the victor, as chief of the nation, paid the nation’s sincere homage to its untitled, but most beloved and lamented citizen. Had the victor been the vanquished, the lustre of his crown would have been undimmed in the judgment of our people or of history. Our rulers are but our agents, chosen in obedience to the convictions which govern the policy of the selection, and mere political success is no enduring constituent of greatness. The public servant, and the private citizen, will alike be honored or condemned, as they are faithful or unfaithful to their responsible duties.
When we search for the agencies of the great epochs in our national progress, we look not to the accidents of place. Unlike all other governments, ours is guided supremely by intelligent and educated public convictions, and those who are clothed with authority, are but the exponents of the popular will. Herein is the source of safety and advancement of our free institutions. On every hand, in the ranks of people, are the tireless teachers of our destiny. Away in the forefront of every struggle, are to be found the masters who brave passion and prejudice and interest, in the perfection of our nationality.
Our free press reaching into almost every hamlet of the land; our colleges now reared in every section; our schools with open doors to all; our churches teaching every faith, with the protection of the law; our citizens endowed with the sacred right of freedom of speech and action; our railroads spanning the continent, climbing our mountains, and stretching into our valleys; our telegraphs making every community the centre of the world’s daily records—these are the agencies which are omnipotent in the expression of our national purposes and duties. Thus directed and maintained, our free government has braved foreign and domestic war, and been purified and strengthened in the crucible of conflict. It has grown from a few feeble States east of the Ohio wilderness, to a vast continent of commonwealths, and forty millions of population. It has made freedom as universal as its authority within its vast possessions. The laws of inequality and caste are blotted from its statutes. It reaches the golden slopes of the Pacific with its beneficence, and makes beauty and plenty in the valleys of the mountains on the sunset side of the Father of Waters. From the cool lakes of the north, to the sunny gulfs of the South, and from the eastern seas to the waters that wash the lands of the Pagan, a homogeneous people obey one constitution, and are devoted to one country. Nor have its agencies and influences been limited to our own boundaries. The whole accessible world has felt its power, and paid tribute to its excellence. Europe has been convulsed from centre to circumference by the resistless throbbings of oppressed peoples for the liberty they cannot know and could not maintain. The proud Briton has imitated his wayward but resolute child, and now rules his own throne. France has sung the Marseillaise, her anthem of freedom, and waded through blood in ill-directed struggles for her disenthralment. The scattered tribes of the Fatherland now worship at the altar of German unity, with a liberalized Empire. The sad song of the serf is no longer heard from the children of the Czar. Italy, dismembered and tempest tossed through centuries, again ordains her laws in the Eternal City, under a monarch of her choice. The throne of Ferdinand and Isabella has now no kingly ruler, and the inspiration of freedom has unsettled the title of despotism to the Spanish sceptre. The trained lightning flashes the lessons of our civilization to the home of the Pyramids; the land of the Heathen has our teachers in its desolate places, and the God of Day sets not upon the boundless triumphs of our government of the people.
Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois,
In the National Republican Convention at Cincinnati, June, 1876, in nominating James G. Blaine for the Presidency.
“Massachusetts may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am I; but if any man nominated by this convention cannot carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of this convention cannot carry the grand old Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that old monument of glory.
“The Republicans of the United States demand as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved political opinions. They demand a reformer after as well as before the election. They demand a politician in the highest, broadest and best sense—a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man acquainted with public affairs, with the wants of the people; with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the demands of the future. They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the relations of this government to the other nations of the earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of each and every department of this Government. They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the financial honor of the United States; one who knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid through the prosperity of this people; one who knows enough to know that all the financial theories in the world cannot redeem a single dollar; one who knows enough to know that all the money must be made, not by law, but by labor; one who knows enough to know that the people of the United States have the industry to make the money and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it.
“The Republicans of the United States demand a man who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they come must come together; that when they come, they will come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields; hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand in hand by the flaming forges; hand in hand by the chimneys filled with eager fire—greeted and grasped by the countless sons of toil.