ity, at all commensurate with the
resources of the nation.

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the
mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human
nature always finds itself cherished; as the children of the convicts
at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other
children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic
institutions lapsing into anarchy, and the older and more cautious among
ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our
turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the
Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor;
and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the
sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our
Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely,
when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying that a monarchy is a
merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock and
go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink,
but then your feet are always in water. No forms can have any dangerous
importance whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no
difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so
long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass
a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is
equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and
centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops
the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty,
by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch-law'
prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in
the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency; everybody's interest requires
that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which
shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as
characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads; and an
abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common
conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men.
Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other.
There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so
many or so resolute for their own. Every m