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DUTIES OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

BY HON. LEVI WOODBURY.

[AN EXTRACT.]

WHILE meditating upon our own astonishing progress, as developed in history, and discriminating with care the origin alike of our perils and securities as a people, does it not behove us to weigh well the importance of our present position? Not our position merely with regard to foreign powers. From them we have, by an early start and rapid progress in the cause of equal rights, long ceased to fear much injury. or to hope for very essential aid, in our further efforts for the thorough improvement of the condition of society in all that is useful or commendable. Nor our position, however the true causes may be distorted or denied our elevated position, in prosperity and honorable estimation, both at home and abroad. But it is our position, so highly responsible, as the only country where the growth of self-government seems fully to have ripened and to have become a model or example to other nations; or, as the case may prove, their scoff and scorn.

To falter here, and now, would, therefore, probably be to cause the experiment of such a government to fail forever. It is not sufficient, in this position, to loathe servitude, or to love liberty with all the enthusiasm of Plutarch's heroes. But we must be warned by our history how to maintain liberty; how to grasp the substance rather than the shadow; to disregard rhetorical flourishes, unless accompanied by deeds; not to be cajoled by holiday finery, or pledges enough to carpet the polls, where integrity and burning zeal do not exist to redeem them; nor to permit ill-vaunting ambition to volunteer and vaunt its professions of ability as well as willingness to serve the people against their own government-any more than demagogues, in a rougher mood, with a view to rob you, sacrilegiously, of those principles, or undermine, with insidious pretensions, those equal institutions which your

fathers bled to secure. Nor does true reform, however frequent in this position, and under those institutions, scarcely ever consist in violence, or what usually amounts to revolution, the sacred right of which, by force or rebellion, in extreme cases of oppression, being seldom necessary to be exercised here, because reform is one of the original elements of those institutions, and one of their great, peaceable, and prescribed objects. However the timid, then, may fear, or the wealthy denounce its progress, it is the principal safety-valve of our system, rather than an explosion to endanger or destroy it. We should also weigh well our delicate position as the sole country whither the discontented in all others resort freely, and, while conforming to the laws, abide securely; and whither the tide of emigration, whether for good or evil, seems each year setting with increased force.

When we reflect on these circumstances, with several others, which leisure does not permit me to enumerate; and when we advert to some of the occurrences in our social and political condition, within the few last years, appearing worse, it is feared, than the slight irregularities and outbreaks of great freedom, on such periodical excitements as elections; and looking rather, in some cases, like more grave departures from legal subordination, and attended, as they have been, on different occasions, and in different quarters, by no feeble indications of obliquity of principle, in morals as well as politics, evinced by violent aggressions, not only on person and property, but the rights of conscience and of free discussion--while we see all this, what does our delicate and peculiar position teach, as to the perils of American liberty? What warning spirit breathes from those events? What inferences should philosophy and our sober judgments draw from their history?

Is it not manifest that the danger now to be guarded against is one arising rather from too little than too much control on the part of the government; too little rather than too much reverence for the constitution, the supremacy of the laws, and the sacredness of personal rights as well as those of property; and if not an undue homage to mere wealth still too great presumptuousness from the 29

VOL. II.

enjoyment of such unexampled prosperity? Looking higher and deeper, is there not seen, also, too much indifference beginning to be entertained in some quarters, with regard to the perpetuity of the Union ?-that political marriage of the states, upon which, like that of our first parents, "all heaven and happy constellations shed their selectest influence." Does there not exist too great an apathy respecting our imperative and lofty duty not to disappoint, in any way, the aspirations and the confidence of the patriot or the philanthropist, in every country directed towards us for the conservation of all the best hopes of the human race? Suspecting, then, some such evil tendencies-feeling such doubts, and fearing such dangers, what do our annals point out as the true republican remedy to check them? Not, we trust, a revivalin substance any more than in form of the stronger arm of monarchical power which preceded the Revolution. By no means. Not, in any crisis, rushing for preservation from outrage or for rescue from anarchy and licentiousness to stronger systems of government-to what, it is hoped, we all deprecate and dread in unnecessary restraints on individual liberty and more arbitrary establishments, under the pretence of aids, though in reality often the most dangerous weapons wielded by the arm of civil power. Never, never. Nor yet a change in our codes of law, harshly increasing their severity, conferring un equal privileges or perpetuating exclusive powers, at the expense of the birth-right and liberties of others. Nor an elevation of property and its possessors to greater dominion over the rights of persons, when its strides have already been so colossal, and its influence so overwhelming.

Neither ought we to indulge in despondency, however apprehensive, with the great blind bard of modern times, that, in some respects, we "have fallen on evil days and evil tongues;" and however conscious that, as a people, we are not entirely free from foibles, errors, and crime, in this erring world, and have not been able to reach every excellence as a nation, or to mature every political security of which our constitutions are susceptible, in the brief period of about half a century.

On the contrary, it behoves us to look our perils and difficulties, such as they are, in the face. Then, with the exercise of candor, calmness, and fortitude, being able to comprehend fully their character and extent, let us profit by the teachings of almost every page in our annals, that any defects under our existing system have resulted more from the manner of administering it than from its substance or form. We less need new laws, new institutions, or new powers, than we need, on all occasions, at all times, and in all places, the requisite intelligence concerning the true spirit of our present ones; the high moral courage, under every hazard, and against every offender, to execute with fidelity the authority already possessed; and the manly independence to abandon all supineness, irresolution, vacillation, and timeserving pusillanimity, and enforce our present mild system with that uniformity and steady vigor throughout, which alone can supply the place of the greater severity of less free institutions. To arm and encourage us in renewed efforts to accomplish every thing on this subject which is desirable, our history constantly points her finger to a most efficient resource, and indeed to the only elixir, to secure a long life to any popular government, in increased attention to useful education and sound morals, with the wise description of equal measures and just practices they inculcate on every leaf of recorded time, Before their alliance the spirit of misrule will always in time stand rebuked, and those who worship at the shrine of unhallowed ambition must quail. Storms in the politi cal atmosphere may occasionally happen by the encroachments of usurpers, the corruption or intrigues of demagogues, or in the expiring agonies of faction, or by the sudden fury of popular frenzy; but with the restraints and salutary influences of the allies before described, these storms will purify as healthfully as they often do in the physical world, and cause the tree of liberty, instead of falling, to strike its roots deeper. In this struggle, the enlightened and moral possess also a power, auxiliary and strong, in the spirit of the age, which is not only with them, but onward, in every thing to ameliorate or improve. When the struggle assumes the form of a con

test with power in all its subtlety, or with undermining and corrupting wealth, as it sometimes may, rather than with turbulence, sedition, or open aggression, by the needy and desperate, it will be indispensable to employ still greater vigilance; to cherish earnestness of purpose, resoluteness in conduct; to apply hard and constant blows to real abuses rather milk-and-water remedies, and encourage not only bold, free, and original thinking, but determined action. In such a cause our fathers were men whose hearts were not accustomed to fail them through fear, however formidable the obstacles. Some of them were companions of Cromwell, and embued deeply with his spirit and iron-decision of character, in whatever they deemed right: "If Pope, and Spaniard, and devil, (said he,) all set themselves against us, though they should compass about as bees, as it is in the 18th Psalm, yet in the name of the Lord we will destroy them." We are not, it is trusted, such degenerate descendants as to prove recreant, and fail to defend, with gallantry and firmness as unflinching, all which we have either derived from them, or since added to the rich inheritance.

New means and energies can yearly be brought to bear on the further enlightening of the public, mind. Self-interest, respectability in society, official rank, wealth, superior enjoyment, are all held out as the rewards of increased intelligence and good conduct. The untaught in letters, as well as the poor in estate, cannot long close their eyes or their judgments to those great truths of daily occurrence in our history. They cannot but feel that the laws, when duly executed, insure these desirable ends in a manner even more striking to themselves and children, drudges and serfs as they may once have been, than to the learned, wealthy, or great. They see the humblest log-cabin rendered as secure a castle as the palace, and the laborer in the lowest walks of life as quickly entitled to the benefit of a habeas corpus when imprisoned without warrant of law, as the highest in power, and assured of as full and ready redress for personal violence, and of indemnity as ample for injury to character or damage to property. Not a particle of his estate, though but a single ewe-lamb in the western wilderness, or the most

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