formed by the civil power; and with us the modes of worship are in no wise prescribed by the State.

Thus, then, the people governs, and solely; it does not divide its power with a hierarchy, a nobility, or a king. The popular voice is all-powerful with us; this is our oracle, and this, we acknowledge, is the voice of God. Invention is solitary, but who shall judge of its results? Inquiry may pursue truth

apart, but who shall decide if truth be overtaken? There is no safe criterion of opinion but the careful exercise of the public judgment; and in the science of government, as elsewhere, the deliberate convictions of mankind, reasoning on the cause of their own happiness, their own wants and interests, are the surest revelations of political truth.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

NECESSITY OF THE UNION.

NOTHING is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government; and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.

It is well worthy of consideration, therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, than that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national gov

ernment.

It is worthy of remark, that not only the first but every succeeding Congress, as well as the late Convention, have invariably joined with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America depends on its Union.

To preserve and perpetuate the Union was the great object of the people in forming that Convention; and it is also the great object of the plan which the Convention has advised them to adopt.

With what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the importance of the Union? or why is it suggested that three or four confederacies would be better than one?

I am persuaded in my own mind, that the people have always thought right on this subject, and that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the Union rests on great and weighty reasons.

Those persons who promote the idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies, in the room of the plan of the Convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy.

That certainly would be the case; and I sincerely wish that it may be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim, in the words of the poet, "Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!"

JOHN JAY. (1788.)

THE NATURE OF THE UNION.

OUR fathers were, by every circumstance surrounding their homes, by their relations to each other, and by their own expressed assent, one people; separated, it is true, into thirteen several municipal organizations, having in many respects diverse interests, but still not the less in mind, in heart, and in destiny,

one.

You and I are descendants of that people; and I ask you if it is not true-if you do not in your hearts know it to be true— that when, in the incipient stages of the revolution through which they were called to struggle, they magnanimously put aside all local differences and jealousies, and with one impulse combined their efforts, their fortunes, their lives, their all, against fearful odds, for the redress of their common grievances at the hands of the mother-country, and for the independence which they resolved to achieve, they evoked an already-existing feeling of unity, and did, in the very essence of the term, form a full,

unreserved, and practical union of the people, intended by themselves to be perpetual? Did they not, as perfectly as any people ever did, constitute and declare themselves a single and undivided nation? Is there in all history an instance of such a union among a people who did not feel themselves to be, in every important particular, the same people? Why, even before the Union was a fact in history, the feeling in the North in reference to it was expressed by James Otis, one of the leading patriots of Massachusetts, in the Convention of 1765, in the hope that a union would be formed which should "knit and work to

gether into the very blood and bones of the original system, every region, as fast as settled;" and from distant South Carolina, greathearted Christopher Gadsden answered back, “There ought to be no New-England man, no New-Yorker, known on the continent, but all of us Americans." And in the very hour of the Union's birth-throes, Patrick Henry flashed upon the Congress of 1774 these lightning words: "All America is thrown into one mass. Where are your landmarks,—your boundaries of colonies? They are all thrown down. The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New-Yorkers, and New-Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." And when, after the Union was a recorded and mighty fact in history, the united people, through their Congress, organized the first form of government for the new-born nation, they solemnly wrote down in the articles of their confederation, "The Union shall be perpetual."

CHARLES DANIEL DRAKE. (1861.)

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

SIR, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic

government, being incapable of any other. I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better constitution. For when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our counsels are confounded, like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet, hereafter, for the purpose of cutting one another's throats.

Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that this is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us, in returning to his constituents, were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partisans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting naturally in our favor, among foreign nations, as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength and efficacy of any government, in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of that government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its governors. I hope, therefore, that for our own sakes, as a part of the people, and for the sake of our posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution, wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

A REPUBLIC THE STRONGEST GOVERNMENT.

(Extract from First Inaugural Address after the bitter Presidential canvass in 1800.)

THE Contest being now decided by the voice of the nation, and announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.

Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind; let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking, through blood and slaughter, his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety: but, every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.

We have called, by different names, brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans: we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand, undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has, so far, kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, to be the strongest government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the stand