application to political parties of the Jesuit principle of implicit obedience.

It is for you to help break this withering spell. It is for you to assert the independence and the dignity of the individual citizen, and to prove that party was made for the voter, not the voter for party. When you are angrily told that if you erect your personal whim against the regular party behest, you make representative government impossible by refusing to accept its conditions, hold fast by your own conscience and let the party go. There is not an American merchant who would send a ship to sea under the command of Captain Kidd, however skillful a sailor he might be. Why should he vote to send Captain Kidd to the legislature, or to put him in command of the ship of state, because his party directs? The party which to-day nominates Captain Kidd, will to-morrow nominate Judas Iscariot; and to-morrow, as to-day, party spirit will spurn you as a traitor for refusing to sell your master. “I tell you,' "said an ardent and well-meaning partizan, speaking of a closely contested election in another State, "I tell you it is a nasty State, and I hope we have done nasty work enough to carry it." But if your State has been carried by nasty means this year, success will require nastier next year, and the nastiest means will always carry it. The party may win, but the State will have been lost, for there are successes which are failures. When a man is sitting upon the bough of a tree and diligently sawing it off between himself and the trunk, he may succeed, but his success will break his neck.

The remedy for the constant excess of party spirit lies, and lies alone, in the courageous independence of the individual citizen. The only way, for instance, to procure the party nomination of good men, is for every self-respecting voter to refuse to vote for bad men. In the medieval theology the devils feared nothing so much as the drop of holy water and the sign of the cross, by which they were exorcised. The evil spirits of party fear nothing so much as bolting and scratching. In hoc signo vinces. If a farmer would reap a good crop, he scratches the weeds

out of his field. If we would have good men upon the ticket, we must scratch bad men off. If the scratching breaks down the party, let it break; for the success of the party by such means would break down the country. The evil spirits must be taught by means that they can understand. "Them fellers' said the captain of a canal boat, of his men "them fellers never think you mean a thing until you kick 'em. They feel that, and understand."

It is especially necessary for us to perceive the vital relation of individual courage and character to the common welfare, because ours is a government of public opinion, and public opinion is but the aggregate of individual thought. We have the awful responsibility as a community of doing what we choose; and it is of the first importance that we choose to do what is wise and right. In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation a meeting was called at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, which a good-natured mob of soldiers was hired to suppress. They took possession of the floor and danced breakdowns, and shouted choruses, and refused to hear any of the orators upon the platform. The most eloquent pleaded with them in vain. They were urged by the memories of the Cradle of Liberty, for the honor of Massachusetts, for their own honor as Boston boys, to respect liberty of speech. But they still laughed and sang, and danced, and were proof against every appeal. At last a man suddenly arose from among themselves, and began to speak. Struck by his tone and quaint appearance, and with the thought that he might be one of themselves, the mob became suddenly still. "Well, fellow citizens, he said, "I wouldn't be quiet if I didn't want to." The words were greeted with a roar of delight from the mob, which supposed it had found its champion, and the applause was unceasing for five minutes, during which the strange orator tranquilly awaited his chance to continue. The wish to hear more hushed the tumult, and when the hall was still, he resumed: "No, I certainly wouldn't stop if I hadn't a mind to; but then, if I were you, I would have a mind to!" The oddity of the remark and the earnestness of the tone held the crowd silent, and the speaker con

tinued, "not because this is Faneuil Hall, nor for the honor of Massachusetts, nor because you are Boston boys, but because you are men, and because honorable and generous men always love fair play." The mob was conquered. Free speech and fair play was secured. Public opinion can do what it has a mind to in this country. If it be debased and demoralized, it is the most odious of tyrants. It is Nero and Caligula multiplied by millions. Can there then be a more stringent public duty for every man—and the greater the intelligence the greater the duty-than to take care, by all the influence he can command, that the country, the majority, public opinion, shall have a mind to do only what is just, and pure, and humane?

Gentlemen, leaving this college to take your part in the discharge of the duties of American citizenship, every sign encourages and inspires. The year that is now ending, the year that opens the second century of our history, has furnished the supreme proof that in a country of rigorous party division the purest patriotism exists. That, and that only, is the pledge of a prosperous future. No mere party fervor, or party fidelity, or party discipline, could fully restore a country torn and distracted by the fierce debate of a century, and the convulsions of civil war; nothing less than a patriotism all-embracing as the summer air could heal a wound so wide. I know-no man better-how hard it is for earnest men to separate their country from their party, or their religion from their sect. But, nevertheless, the welfare of the country is dearer than the mere victory of party, as truth is more precious than the interest of any sect. You will hear this patriotism scorned as an impracticable theory, as the dream of a cloister, as the whim of a fool. But such was the folly of the Spartan Leonidas, staying with his three hundred the Persian horde, and teaching Greece the self-reliance that saved her. Such was the folly of the Swiss Arnold von Winkelried, gathering into his own breast the host of Austrian spears, making his dead body the bridge of victory for his countrymen. Such was the folly of the American Nathan Hale, gladly risking the seeming disgrace of his name, and grieving

that he had but one life to give for his country. Such are the beacon lights of a pure patriotism that burn forever in men's memories and answer each other through the illuminated ages. And of the same grandeur, in less heroic and poetic form, was the patriotism of Sir Robert Peel, in recent history. He was the leader of a great party, and the prime minister of England. The character and necessity of party were as plain to him as to any man. But when he saw that the national welfare demanded the repeal of the corn laws, which he had always supported, he did not quail. Amply avowing the error of a life, and the duty of avowing it-foreseeing the probable overthrow of his party and the bitter execration that must fall upon him, he tranquilly did his duty. With the eyes of England fixt upon him in mingled amazement, admiration, and indignation, he rose in the House of Commons to perform as great a service as any English statesman ever performed for his country, and in closing his last speech in favor of the repeal, describing the consequences that its mere prospect had produced, he loftily exclaimed: "Where there was dissatisfaction, I see contentment; where there was turbulence, I see there is peace; where there was disloyalty, I see there is loyalty. I see a disposition to confide in you, and not to agitate questions that are the foundations of your institutions. When all was over, when he had left office, when his party was out of power, and the fury of party execration against him was spent, his position was greater and nobler than it had ever been. Cobden said of him, "Sir Robert Peel has lost office, but he has gained a country"; and Lord Dalling said of him, what may truly be said of Washington: "Above all parties, himself a party, he had trained his own mind into a disinterested sympathy with the intelligence of his country."

A public spirit so lofty is not confined to other ages and lands. You are conscious of its stirrings in your souls. It calls you to courageous service, and I am here to bid you obey the call. Such patriotism may be yours. Let it be your parting vow that it shall be yours. Bolingbroke

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described a patriot king in England; I can imagine a patriot President in America. I can see him, indeed, the choice of a party, and called to administer the Government when sectional jealousy is fiercest and party passion most inflamed. I can imagine him seeing clearly what justice and humanity, the national law and the national welfare, require him to do, and resolved to do it. I can imagine him patiently enduring not only the mad cry of party hate, the taunt of "recreant" and "traitor," of "renegade" and 'coward," but what is harder to bear, the amazement, the doubt, the grief, the denunciation, of those as sincerely devoted as he to the common welfare. I can imagine him pushing firmly on, trusting the heart, the intelligence, the conscience of his countrymen, healing angry wounds, correcting misunderstandings, planting justice on surer foundations, and, whether his party rise or fall, lifting his country heavenward to a more perfect union, prosperity, and peace. This is the spirit of a patriotism that girds the commonwealth with the resistless splendor of the moral law -the invulnerable panoply of States, the celestial secret of a great nation and a happy people.

LIBERTY AND UNION*

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union was reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in

*From "The Second Specch on Foot's Resolution," delivered in the Senate, January 26, 1830.