Men, pensioned by the Government, lived on the salary of the
Government only to have better opportunity to stab and betray it. And
for the North to have lain down like a spaniel, to have given up the
land that every child in America is taught, as every child in Britain is
taught, to regard as his sacred right and his trust, to have given up
the mouths of our own rivers and our mountain citadels without a blow,
would have marked the North in all future history as craven and mean.
Second, the honor and safety of that grand experiment, self-government
by free institutions, demanded that so flagitious a violation of the
first principles of legality should not carry off impunity and reward,
thereafter enabling the minority in every party conflict to turn and say
to the majority, "If you don't give us our way we will make war." Oh,
Englishmen, would you let a minority dictate in such a way to you? The
principle thus introduced would literally have no end, would carry the
nation back to its original elements of isolated states. Nor is there
any reason why it should stop with states.
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