Читать книгу Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides - Various - Страница 8

The great object which the statesmen of the Revolution sought, was the defense, protection, and good government of the whole, without injustice to any portion of the people. Experience had taught them that it was impossible for a great republic to grow up where its every act of public policy was liable to be thwarted by the vote of the individual States; therefore they framed an organic law at the foundation of our common government, which gave the men of Carolina and Massachusetts a name dearer than any sectional name – the name of an American citizen! In that conflict of opinions, by a temper of conciliation and brotherly love, by an earnest loyalty to freedom and profoundest reverence for law, they framed that constitution which has been the admiration of the world.

I yield to no man in my admiration for those noble men whose names are our household words; but in this history I see the hand of God and acknowledge that our nationality was his gift and not the fruits of our fathers' wisdom. Ours is not the only nation who have sought to be free. Strong arms and stout hearts have often failed – the world is filled with the lamentations of the patriots and dirges for the dead. God always gives to a nation its birthright and its name. A nation is not a mere aggregate of households, or villages, or States – national life is something beyond the fact that individual men have banded together for mutual defense. This belonged to the savage tribes who once roamed over this goodly land. They may be strong, daring, freedom-loving men, without national life. There never was a nobler race than the people who dwelt in the fastnesses of Scotland, but their tie was only one of kindred; the family became a clan, separate clans warred with each other in murderous strife, and Scotland was a field of blood. Until the cross was firmly planted in Britain, England had no nationality – it was a land of faction until the law and providence of God became the people's guide, and then the nobler name of Saxon became a Christian name to tell of all that is manly and true. Our national life is the gift of God. No other hand could gather out of other lands millions of people of different tongues and kindred, and mold these into one mighty nation that shall receive into itself the men of every clime, and stamp on them its own mark of individuality, teaching them its language, making them its kin, and binding them as one household under its own constitution and laws.