The Art of Public Speaking
timidity, and distrust." It is the moral impulses that matter. Where
they are safe, all is safe.
When this and the like is said, nobody supposes that the last word has
been spoken as to the condition of the people either in America or
Europe. Republicanism is not itself a panacea for economic difficulties.
Of self it can neither stifle nor appease the accents of social
discontent. So long as it has no root in surveyed envy, this discontent
itself is a token of progress.
What, cries the skeptic, what has become of all the hopes of the time
when France stood upon the top of golden hours? Do not let us fear the
challenge. Much has come of them. And over the old hopes time has
brought a stratum of new.
Liberalism is sometimes suspected of being cold to these new hopes, and
you may often hear it said that Liberalism is already superseded by
Socialism. That a change is passing over party names in Europe is plain,
but you may be sure that no change in name will extinguish these
principles of society which are rooted in the nature of things, and are
accredited by their success. Twice America has saved liberalism in Great
Britain. The War for Independence in the eighteenth century was the
defeat of usurping power no less in England than here. The War for Union
in the nineteenth century gave the decisive impulse to a critical
extension of suffrage, and an era of popular reform in the mother
country. Any miscarriage of democracy here reacts against progress in
Great Britain.
If you seek the real meaning of most modern disparagement of popular or
parliamentary government, it is no more than this, that no politics will
suffice of themselves to make a nation's soul. What could be more true?
Who says it will? But we may depend upon it that the soul will be best
kept alive in a nation where there is the highest proportion of those
who, in the phrase of an old worthy of the seventeenth century, think it
a part of a man's religion to see to it that his country be well
governed.
Democracy, they tell us, is afflicted by mediocrity and by sterility.
But has not democracy in my country, as in yours, shown before now that
it well knows how to choose rulers neither mediocre nor sterile; men
more than the equals in unselfishness, in rectitude, in clear sight, in
force, of any absolutist statesman, that ever in times past bore the
scepter? If I live a few months, or it may be even a few weeks longer, I
hope to have seen something of three elections--one in Canada, one in
the United Kingdom, and the other here. With us, in respect of
leadership, and apart from height of social prestige, the personage
corresponding to the president is, as you know, the prime minister. Our
general election this time, owing to personal accident of the passing
hour, may not determine quite exactly who shall be the prime minister,
but it will determine the party from which the prime minister shall be
taken. On normal occasions our election of a prime minister is as direct
and personal as yours, and in choosing a member of Parliament people
were really for a whole generation choosing whether Disraeli or
Gladstone or Salisbury should be head of the government.
The one central difference between your system and ours is that the
American president is in for a fixed time, whereas the British prime
minister depends upon the support of the House of Commons. If he loses
that, his power may not endure a twelvemonth; if on the other hand, he
keeps it, he may hold office for a dozen years. There are not many more
interesting or important questions in political discussion than the
question whether our cabinet government or your presidential system of
government is the better. This is not the place to argue it.
Between 1868 and now--a period of thirty-six years--we have had eight
ministries. This would give an average life of four and a half years. Of
these eight governments five lasted over five years. Broadly speaking,
then, our executive governments have lasted about the length of your
fixed term. As for ministers swept away by a gust of passion, I can only
recall the overthrow of Lord Palmerston in 1858 for being thought too
subservient to France. For my own part, I have always thought that by
its free play, its comparative fluidity, its rapid flexibility of
adaptation, our cabinet system has most to say for itself.
Whether democracy will make for peace, we all have yet to see. So far
democracy has done little in Europe to protect us against the turbid
whirlpools of a military age. When the evils of rival states,
antagonistic races, territorial claims, and all the other formulas of
international conflict are felt to be unbearable and the curse becomes
too great to be any longer borne, a school of teachers will perhaps
arise to pick up again the thread of the best writers and wisest rulers
on the eve of the revolution. Movement in this region of human things
has not all been progressive. If we survey the European courts from the
end of the Seven Years' War down to the French Revolution, we note the
marked growth of a distinctly international and pacific spirit. At no
era in the world's history can we find so many European statesmen after
peace and the good government of which peace is the best ally. That
sentiment came to violent end when Napoleon arose to scourge the world.
_ROBERT TOOMBS_
ON RESIGNING FROM THE SENATE, 1861
(Abridged)
The success of the Abolitionists and their allies, under the name of the
Republican party, has produced its logical results already. They have
for long years been sowing dragons' teeth and have finally got a crop of
armed men. The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished fact in
the path of this discussion that men may as well heed. One of your
confederates has already wisely, bravely, boldly confronted public
danger, and she is only ahead of many of her sisters because of her
greater facility for speedy action. The greater majority of those sister
States, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; and
I charge you in their name to-day: "Touch not Saguntum."[37] It is not
only their cause, but it is a cause which receives the sympathy and will
receive the support of tens and hundreds of honest patriot men in the
nonslaveholding States, who have hitherto maintained constitutional
rights, and who respect their oaths, abide by compacts, and love
justice.
And while this Congress, this Senate, and this House of Representatives
are debating the constitutionality and the expediency of seceding from
the Union, and while the perfidious authors of this mischief are
showering down denunciations upon a large portion of the patriotic men
of this country, those brave men are coolly and calmly voting what you
call revolution--aye, sir, doing better than that: arming to defend it.
They appealed to the Constitution, they appealed to justice, they
appealed to fraternity, until the Constitution, justice, and fraternity
were no longer listened to in the legislative halls of their country,
and then, sir, they prepared for the arbitrament of the sword; and now
you see the glittering bayonet, and you hear the tramp of armed men from
your capitol to the Rio Grande. It is a sight that gladdens the eyes and
cheers the hearts of other millions ready to second them. Inasmuch, sir,
as I have labored earnestly, honestly, sincerely, with these men to
avert this necessity so long as I deemed it possible, and inasmuch as I
heartily approve their present conduct of resistance, I deem it my duty
to state their case to the Senate, to the country, and to the civilized
world.
Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new government; they have
demanded no new Constitution. Look to their records at home and here
from the beginning of this national strife until its consummation in the
disruption of the empire, and they have not demanded a single thing
except that you shall abide by the Constitution of the United States;
that constitutional rights shall be respected, and that justice shall be
done. Sirs, they have stood by your Constitution; they have stood by all
its requirements, they have performed all its duties unselfishly,
uncalculatingly, disinterestedly, until a party sprang up in this
country which endangered their social system--a party which they
arraign, and which they charge before the American people and all
mankind with having made proclamation of outlawry against four thousand
millions of their property in the Territories of the United States; with
having put them under the ban of the empire in all the States in which
their institutions exist outside the protection of federal laws; with
having aided and abetted insurrection from within and invasion from
without with the view of subverting those institutions, and desolating
their homes and their firesides. For these causes they have taken up
arms.
I have stated that the discontented States of this Union have demanded
nothing but clear, distinct, unequivocal, well-acknowledged
constitutional rights--rights affirmed by the highest judicial tribunals
of their country; rights older than the Constitution; rights which are
planted upon the immutable principles of natural justice; rights which
have been affirmed by the good and the wise of all countries, and of all
centuries. We demand no power to injure any man. We demand no right to
injure our confederate States. We demand no right to interfere with
their institutions, either by word or deed. We have no right to disturb
their peace, their tranquillity, their security. We have demanded of
them simply, solely--nothing else--to give us _equality, security and
tranquillity_. Give us these, and peace restores itself. Refuse them,
and take what you can get.
What do the rebels demand? First, "that the people of the United States
shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or any
future acquired Territories, with whatever property they may possess
(including slaves), and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment
until such Territory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with or
without slavery, as she may determine, on an equality with all existing
States." That is our Territorial demand. We have fought for this
Territory when blood was its price. We have paid for it when gold was
its price. We have not proposed to exclude you, tho you have contributed
very little of blood or money. I refer especially to New England. We
demand only to go into those Territories upon terms of equality with
you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy the common property
of the whole Union, and receive the protection of the common government,
until the Territory is capable of coming into the Union as a sovereign
State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit itself.
The second proposition is, "that property in slaves shall be entitled to
the same protection from the government of the United States, in all of
its departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the power
upon it to extend to any other property, provided nothing herein
contained shall be construed to limit or restrain the right now
belonging to every State to prohibit, abolish, or establish and protect
slavery within its limits." We demand of the common government to use
its granted powers to protect our property as well as yours. For this
protection we pay as much as you do. This very property is subject to
taxation. It has been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes.
The title to thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is derived from
the United States. We claim that the government, while the Constitution
recognizes our property for the purposes of taxation, shall give it the
same protection that it gives yours.
Ought it not to be so? You say no. Every one of you upon the committee