Our political
constitution still bears in its bosom, even after Slavery is removed,
dangerous seeds of anarchy and prospective revolution. Within the two
years past, grave mutterings, to which American ears have been
heretofore altogether unused, have been heard in various quarters,
touching the superior advantages of 'strong government,' the speakers,
mostly of the higher or wealthier order of life, meaning thereby, the
old and retrograde forms of monarchy, or something of that sort. Periods
of disaster tend to reveal a latent lack of confidence in the permanency
of existing things. Investigations in Sociology impeach the wisdom of
our institutions, in common with that of all others that have been tried
in the past, from another point of view. Periods of distress and
privation stimulate the turbulence of the 'dangerous classes.' All
national experience reveals, in fine, the existence, in the very nature
of human society, of great antagonistic principles struggling with each
other in mighty conflict, and with which no political or governmental
arrangements heretofore extant have been adequate rightly to cope.
The great and bloody contest with Slavery, now going on, is an instance
of such a conflict; and the fact that we, in the midst of this
nineteenth century, had arrived at the knowledge of no better solution
of it than an appeal to the old, barbarous, uncertain, and terrible
ordeal of battle, is an illustration of the incompetency in question.
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