And if the Americans with their form of government have done for themselves all that we expect our government to do for us; if they have with some fair approach to general excellence obtained respect abroad and security at home from foreign foes; if they have made life, liberty, and property safe under their laws, and have also so written and executed their laws as to secure their people from legal oppression,--I maintain that they are entitled to a verdict in their favor, let us object as we may to universal suffrage, to four years'
Presidents and four years' presidential cabinets. What, after all, matters the theory or the system, whether it be king or president, universal suffrage or ten-pound voter, so long as the people be free and prosperous? King and president, suffrage by poll and suffrage by property, are but the means. If the end be there, if the thing has been done, king and president, open suffrage and close suffrage, may alike be declared to have been successful. The Americans have been in existence as a nation for seventy-five years, and have achieved an amount of foreign respect during that period greater than any other nation ever obtained in double the time. And this has been given to them, not in deference to the statesmanlike craft of their diplomatic and other officers, but on grounds the very opposite of those. It has been given to them because they form a numerous, wealthy, brave, and self-asserting nation. It is, Ithink, unnecessary to prove that such foreign respect has been given to them; but were it necessary, nothing would prove it more strongly than the regard which has been universally paid by European governments to the blockade placed during this war on the Southern ports by the government of the United States. Had the nation been placed by general consent in any class of nations below the first, England, France, and perhaps Russia would have taken the matter into their own hands, and have settled for the States, either united or disunited, at any rate that question of the blockade. And the Americans have been safe at home from foreign foes; so safe, that no other strong people but ourselves have enjoyed anything approaching to their security since their foundation. Nor has our security been at all equal to theirs, if we are to count our nationality as extending beyond the British Isles. Then as to security under their laws and from their laws! Those laws and the system of their management have been taken almost entirely from us, and have so been administered that life and property have been safe, and the subject also has been free, under the law. I think that this may be taken for granted, seeing that they who have been most opposed to American forms of government have never asserted the reverse. I may be told of a man being lynched in one State, or tarred and feathered in another, or of a duel in a third being "fought at sight." So I may be told also of men garroted in London, and of tithe proctors buried in a bog without their ears in Ireland. Neither will seventy years of continuance, nor will seven hundred, secure such an observance of laws as will prevent temporary ebullition of popular feeling, or save a people from the chance disgrace of occasional outrage.
Taking the general, life and limb and property have been as safe in the States as in other civilized countries with which we are acquainted.
As to their personal liberty under their laws, I know it will be said that they have surrendered all claim to any such precious possession by the facility with which they have now surrendered the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It has been taken from them, as I have endeavored to show, illegally, and they have submitted to the loss and to the illegality without a murmur! But in such a matter I do not think it fair to judge them by their conduct in such a moment as the present. That this is the very moment in which to judge of the efficiency of their institutions generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If it be that the people, when the war is over, shall consent to live under a military or other dictatorship, that they shall quietly continue their course as a nation without recovery of their rights of freedom, then we shall have to say that their institutions were not founded in a soil of sufficient depth, and that they gave way before the first high wind that blew on them. I myself do not expect such a result.
