⚫ 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 a republican Government cannot 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. I believe this on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels, in the form of Kings, to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own Federal and Republican principles-our attachment to Union and representative Government. Kindly separated, by nature and a wide ocean, from the exterminating havoc of onequarter of the globe,-too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others,possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation,-entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions, and their sense of them,-enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man,—acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary, to make us a happy and prosperous People?

Still one thing more, fellow-citizens; a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth. of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS AT ARLINGTON CEMETERY ON DECORATION DAY.

RIEND

FOR ENDS and Fellow Citizens: Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be

few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead, a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of

every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human existence.

Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldier dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.

Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career, that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.

No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.

When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and selfgovernment throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these States was torn and rent asunder at the centre, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundation of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country.

We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation's life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice.

I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my "right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict.

If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones-I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?

The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot

and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier.

But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation's destroyers. If to-day we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the starspangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us.

KING ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICA.

HAVE faith in the future, because I have confidence in the present. With our growth in wealth and in power, I see no abatement in those qualities, moral and physical, to which so much of our success is owing; and, while thus true to ourselves, true to the instincts of freedom, and to those other instincts, which, with our race, seem to go hand in hand with Freedom,-love of order and respect for law (as law, and not because it is upheld by force),-we must continue to prosper.

The sun shines not upon, has never shone upon, a land where human happiness is so widely disseminated, where human government is so little abused, so free from oppression, so invisible, so intangible, and yet so strong. Nowhere else do the institutions which constitute a State rest upon so broad a base as here; and nowhere are men so powerless, and institutions so strong. In the wilderness of free minds, dissensions will occur; and, in the unlimited discussion in writing and in speech, in town-meetings, newspapers, and legislative bodies, angry and menacing language will be used; irritations will arise and be aggravated; and those immediately concerned in the strife, or breathing its atmosphere, may fear, or feign to fear, that danger is in such hot breath and passionate resolves. But outside, and above, and beyond all this, is the People,-steady, industrious, self-possessed,—caring little for abstractions, and less for abstractionist, but, with one deep, common sentiment, and with the consciousness, calm, but quite sure and earnest, that, in the Constitution and the Union, as they received them from their fathers, and as they themselves have observed and maintained them, is the sheet-anchor of their hope, the pledge of their prosperity, the palladium of their liberty; and with this, is that other consciousness, not less calm and not less earnest, that, in their own keeping exclusively, and not in that of any party leaders or party demagogues, or political hacks, or speculators, is the integrity of that Union and that Constitution. It is in the strong arms and honest hearts of the great masses, who are not members of Congress, nor holders

of office, nor spouters at town-meetings, that resides the safety of the State; and these masses, though slow to move, are irresistible, when the time and the occasion for moving comes.

I have faith, therefore, in the future; and when, at the close of this half century, which so comparatively few of us are to see, the account shall again be taken, and the question be asked, What has New York done since 1850? I have faith that the answer will be given in a City still advancing in population, wealth, morals, and knowledge, in a City free, and deserving, by her virtues, her benevolent institutions, her schools, her courts and her temples, to continue free, and still part and parcel of this great and glorious Union-which may God preserve till Time shall be

no more.

SINCE

PRENTISS ON OFFICIAL INTEGRITY.

INCE the avowal, Mr. Chairman, of the unprincipled and barbarian motto, that "to the victors belong the spoils," office, which was intended for the service and benefit of the People, has become but the plunder of party. Patronage is waved like a huge magnet over the land; and demagogues, like iron-filings, attracted by a law of their nature, gather and cluster around its poles. Never yet lived the demagogue who would not take office. The whole frame of our Government-all the institutions of the country-are thus prostituted to the uses of party. Office is conferred as the reward of partisan service; and what is the consequence? The incumbents, being taught that all moneys in their possession belong, not to the People, but to the party, it requires but small exertion of casuistry to bring them to the conclusion that they have a right to retain what they may conceive to be the value of their political services-just as a lawyer holds back his commissions.

Sir, I have given you but three or four cases of defalcations. Would time permit, I could give you a hundred. Like the fair Sultana of the Oriental legends, I could go on for a thousand and one nights; and even as in those Eastern stories, so in the chronicles of the office-holders, the tale would ever be of heaps of gold, massive ingots, uncounted riches. Why, Sir, Aladdin's wonderful lamp was nothing to it. They seem to possess the identical cap of Fortunatus. Some wish for fifty thousand dollars, some for a hundred thousand, and some for a million-and behold, it lies in glittering heaps before them! Not even

"The gorgeous East, with richest hand,

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold"

in such lavish abundance, as does this Administration upon its followers. Pizarro held not forth more dazzling lures to his robber band, when he led them to the conquest of the "Children of the Sun."

And now it is proposed to make up these losses through defaulters by retrenchment! And what do you suppose are to be the subjects of this new and sudden economy? What branches of the public service are to be lopped off, on account of the licentious rapacity of the office-holders? I am too indignant to tell you.

Look