In the early stages of the new Government, when all felt the imposing
influence as they recognized the unequaled services of the first
President, it was a common sentiment that the great weight of his
character could alone bind the discordant materials of our Government
together and save us from the violence of contending factions. Since his
death nearly forty years are gone. Party exasperation has been often
carried to its highest point; the virtue and fortitude of the people
have sometimes been greatly tried; yet our system, purified and enhanced
in value by all it has encountered, still preserves its spirit of free
and fearless discussion, blended with unimpaired fraternal feeling.
The capacity of the people for self-government, and their willingness,
from a high sense of duty and without those exhibitions of coercive
power so generally employed in other countries, to submit to all needful
restraints and exactions of municipal law, have also been favorably
exemplified in the history of the American States. Occasionally, it is
true, the ardor of public sentiment, outrunning the regular progress of
the judicial tribunals or seeking to reach cases not denounced as
criminal by the existing law, has displayed itself in a manner
calculated to give pain to the friends of free government and to
encourage the hopes of those who wish for its overthrow. These
occurrences, however, have been far less frequent in our country than in
any other of equal population on the globe, and with the diffusion of
intelligence it may well be hoped that they will constantly diminish in
frequency and violence.
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