6 



adequately appreciate the great good, which, out of this great 

 evil, has been assured to us. Our study should rather be to 

 secure and render perpetual what, in the Providence of God, 

 so great a sacrifice has opened to us. 



It is also no little satisfaction to know, that those, what at- 

 tacked most violently and desperately the integrity of the 

 Republic, made no attempt to establish a better and no claim 

 that a better was attainable by them. On the other hand, 

 they were compelled, practically, to confess that they could 

 lay no better foundations than were laid, by copying with 

 almost precise exactness the very Constitution, which they 

 were attempting to avoid ; and while they based their ob- 

 jection to the integrity of the nation, not upon the govern- 

 ment itself, but upon the administration of it, they were forced 

 to the position — to make a pretence of justification before a 

 civilized and Christian world — that it was not so much against 

 the administration, which they had experienced, as against that 

 which they feared might, in the future, be resorted to — that 

 they took up arms. Such a cause, except by the grossest der- 

 eliction of duty on the part of those having control of public 

 affairs, could not succeed ; and the people of the country de- 

 termined that with the blessing of God it should not succeed. 

 It failed. The government stands ; and it shall stand for- 

 ever. There may have been — undoubtedly were — errors of 

 opinion and errors of conduct, but the one great pervading, 

 all-absorbing, universal determination of the people, with an 

 identity like the pulsations of one great heart, was for the in- 

 tegrity of the nation, its government and its institutions. It 

 was indeed at a fearful cost; that cost should enhance our 

 appreciation of the value of the result. 



It has seemed to me that, now, just as we are emerging 

 from this terrible conflict, there can be no fitter subject for an 

 hour's consideration than the nature, object and purposes of 

 good government, with especial reference to our own and its 

 institutions. 



What is government ? Till very recently, we have' scarcely 



