And let us reflect that, having banished from our land
that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and
suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political
intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody
persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world,
during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and
slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the
agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by
others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every
difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called
by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all
Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would
wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them
stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion
may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed,
that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be
strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest
patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government
which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary
fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility
want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.
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