one
Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the Citizen King, and
the Republic; Through all these different experiments centralization was
the keynote of the institutions of France--power always centralized;
omnipotence always vested somewhere. And, remarkable indeed, France has
never yet raised one single man to the seat of power, who has not
sacrificed his country's freedom to his personal ambition!

It is sorrowful indeed, but it is natural. It is in the garden of
centralization that the venomous plant of ambition thrives. I dare
confidently affirm, that in your great country there exists not a single
man through whose brains has ever passed the thought, that he would wish
to raise the seat of his ambition upon the ruins of your country's
liberty, if he could. Such a wish is impossible in the United States.
Institutions react upon the character of nations. He who sows wind will
reap storm. History is the revelation of Providence. The Almighty rules
by eternal laws not only the material but also the moral world; and as
every law is a principle, so every principle is a law. Men as well as
nations are endowed with free-will to choose a principle, but, that once
chosen, the consequences must be accepted.

With self-government is freedom, and with freedom is justice and
patriotism. With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells
despotism. Happy your great country, sir, for being so warmly attached
to that great principle of self-government. Upon this foundation your
fathers raised a home to freedom more glorious than the world has ever
seen. Upon this foundation you have developed it to a living wonder of
the world. Happy your great country, sir! that it was selected by the
blessing of the Lord to prove the glorious practicability of a
federative union of many sovereign States, all preserving their
State-rights and their self-government, and yet united in one--every
star beaming with its own lustre, but altogether one constellation on
mankind's canopy.

Upon this foundation your free country has grown to prodigious power in
a surprizingly brief period, a power which attracts by its fundamental
principle. You have conquered by it more in seventy-five years than Rome
by arms in centuries. Your principles will conquer the world. By the
glorious example of your freedom, welfare, and security, mankind is
about to become conscious of its aim. The lesson you give to humanity
will not be lost. The respect