n the honor of office by trafficking with
disorder. The conduct of public affairs is not a game. Responsible
office does not go to the crafty. Governments are not founded upon an
association for public plunder but on the cooeperation of men wherein
each is seeking to do his duty.

The past five years have been like an earthquake. They have shaken the
institutions of men to their very foundations. It has been a time of
searchings and questionings. It has been a time of great awakenings.
There has been an overpowering resolution among men to make things
better. Despotisms have been falling. Republics have been rising. There
has been rebellion everywhere against usurped authority. With all that
America has been entirely sympathetic. There has been bred in the blood
through generations a great sympathy for all peoples struggling to be
free. We have a deep conviction that "resistance to tyranny is obedience
to law." And on that conviction we have stood for three centuries. Time
and experience have but strengthened our belief that it is sound.

But like all rules of action it only applies to the conditions it
describes. All authority is not usurped authority. Any government is not
tyranny. These are the counterfeits. There are no counterfeits of the
unreal. It is only of the real and true that men seek to pass spurious
imitations.

There are among us a great mass of people who have been reared for
generations under a government of tyranny and oppression. It is
ingrained in their blood that there is no other form of government. They
are disposed and inclined to think our institutions partake of the same
nature as these they have left behind. We know they are wrong. They must
be shown they are wrong.

There is a just government. There are righteous laws. We know the
formula by which they are produced. The principle is best stated in the
immortal Declaration of Independence to be "the consent of the
governed." It is from that source our Government derives its just
powers and promulgates its righteous laws. They are the will of the
people, the settled conviction derived from orderly deliberation, that
take on the sanctity ascribed to the people's voice. Along with the
binding obligation to resist tyranny goes the other admonition, that
"obedience to law is liberty,"--such law and so derived.

These principles, which I have but lightly sketched, are the foundation
of American institutions, the source of American freedom and t