It makes the difference between a society of self-respecting
men and women and a society of puppets.
Your nation may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of
civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can
devise; but if it lose this spirit of personal and local independence,
it is doomed and deserves its doom. As President Cleveland has well
said, it is not the business of a government to support its people, but
of the people to support their government; and once to lose sight
of this vital truth is as dangerous as to trifle with some stealthy
narcotic poison. Of the two opposite perils which have perpetually
threatened the welfare of political society--anarchy on the one hand,
loss of self-government on the other--Jefferson was right in maintaining
that the latter is really the more to be dreaded because its beginnings
are so terribly insidious. Many will understand what is meant by a
threat of secession, where few take heed of the baneful principle
involved in a Texas Seed-bill.
That the American people are still fairly alive to the importance of
these considerations, is due to the weary ages of struggle in which our
forefathers have manfully contended for the right of self-government.
From the days of Arminius and Civilis in the wilds of lower Germany to
the days of Franklin and Jefferson in Independence Hall, we have been
engaged in this struggle, not without some toughening of our political
fibre, not without some refining of our moral sense.
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