342 WlSCOJ^SIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
so simple, so comprehensive, or so sure to this end as to solve all 
the minor difficulties in the government of society by a radical basis 
for its source, a common field for its operation, and an authentic 
and deliberate method for consulting and enforcing the will of the 
people as the sole authority of the state. 
By this wisdom they at least would shift, within the sphere of gov¬ 
ernment, the continuous warfare of human nature, on the field of 
good and evil, right and wrong, 
“ Between whose endless jar justice resides,” 
from conflicts of the strength of the many against the craft of the 
few. They would gain the advantage of supplying as the reason 
of the state, the reason of the people, and decide by the moral and 
intellectual influences of instruction and persuasion, the issue of 
who should make and who administer the laws. This involved no 
pretensions of the perfection of human nature, nor did it assume 
that at other times, or under other circumstances, they would them¬ 
selves have been capable of self-government; or, that other people 
then were, or ever would be, so capable. Their knowledge of man¬ 
kind showed them that there would be faults and crimes so long as 
there were men. Their faith taught them that this corruptible 
would put on incorruption only when this mortal should put on im¬ 
mortality. Nevertheless they believed in man and trusted in God, 
and on these imperishable supports they thought they might rest 
civil government for a people who had these living conceptions 
wrought into their own characters and lives. 
The past and the present are the only means by which man fore¬ 
sees or shapes the future. Upon the evidence of the past, the con¬ 
templation of the present of this people, our statesmen were willing 
to commence a system which must continually draw, for its susten¬ 
ance and growth, upon the virtue and vigor of the people. From 
this virtue and this vigor it can alone be nourished; it must decline 
in their decline and rot in their decay. They traced this vigor and 
virtue to inexhaustible springs. And, as the unspent heat of a lava 
soil quickened by the returning summers, through the vintages of 
a thousand years, will still glow in the grape and sparkle in the 
wdne, so will the exuberant forces of a race supply an unstinted 
vigor to mark the virtues of immense populations and to the remot¬ 
est generations. 
