And State Papers 469 



of men any distinction save the distinction of con- 

 duct, the distinction that marks off those who do well 

 and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. 

 There are good citizens and bad citizens in every 

 class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent 

 people toward great public and social questions 

 should be determined, not by the accidental ques- 

 tions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set 

 principles which represent the innermost souls of 

 men. 



The failure in public and in private life thus to 

 treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of 

 this government as being either for the poor as such 

 or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Re- 

 public, as such failure and such recognition have al- 

 ways proved fatal in the past to other republics. A 

 healthy republican government must rest upon indi- 

 viduals, not upon classes or sections. As soon as it 

 becomes government by a class or by a section it 

 departs from the old American ideal. 



It is, of course, the merest truism to say that free 

 institutions are of avail only to people who pos- 

 sess the high and peculiar characteristics needed to 

 take advantage of such institutions. The century 

 that has just closed has witnessed many and lam- 

 entable instances in which people have seized a 

 government free in form, or have had it bestowed 

 upon them, and yet have permitted it under the 

 forms of liberty to become some species of despotism 

 or anarchy, because they did not have in them the 

 power to make this seeming liberty one of deed in- 



