... Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration and Washington's Farewell Address: Edited with Notes and an Introduction

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1905 - 107 pages
 

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Page 85 - The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.
Page 83 - With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
Page 83 - Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the union by which they were procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren, and connect them with aliens?
Page 94 - Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing...
Page 89 - One method of* preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible ; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it ; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which...
Page 8 - VENERABLE MEN ! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet : but all else how changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes...
Page 95 - The considerations, which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe, that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right, so far from being denied by any of the Belligerent Powers, has been virtually admitted by all.
Page 84 - To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute ; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management...
Page 96 - Though in reviewing the incidents of my Administration, I am unconscious of intentional error — I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I [may] have committed many errors. — [Whatever they may be I] * fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate [the evils to which they may tend...
Page 89 - Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. — The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of Free Government. — Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric ? — [Promote then as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.

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