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of corruption has reared an altar for its worshippers in the temple of our liberties; the venders of political wares have made its holiest sanctuary their market-place. Let the people drive out the money-changers; drive them out by the force of honest votes; drive them out, by performing the duties of citizens. Thus shall the glorious covenant with freedom, ratified by our fathers, not be broken. Shrink not from the duty of the elective franchise, if you would preserve, in their primal strength and beauty, the cardinal principles of our system. But if citizens allow business or pleasure to absorb the single hour their country asks them to give to her service; if they bewail corruption, without arresting its progress, they need utter no complaint if it blasts the purity and truth of the people, and renders our national character a byword and a reproach; a lie against freedom, a libel upon humanity.

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The neglect of this primal duty has led, in various portions of our land, to confusion and anarchy. Because honest citizens have neglected to perform their duties, political corruption has accomplished the vilest purposes; and so powerful in their misuse of the ballot-box had the miscreants who corrupted its purity become,

that revolution was the only means by which they could be ousted from their usurpation. But it is a dangerous experiment. Our system contains its own correction, if the citizen will apply it in time. Vigilance committees were never contemplated by the Constitution; but every citizen is exhorted, by the spirit of that instrument, to exercise that true vigilance which will destroy an evil before it can mature, and guard our liberty against the insidious wiles of the serpents it has nourished by its warmth.

There are other duties of action and of speech, whose proper fulfilment should ever be operative upon the American citizen; but they are all intimately connected with his duties at the ballot-box. They must be manfully performed, to render us the efficient champions of the liberties we enjoy.

The future contains the elements of disorganization. There is to be a terrible reckoning in the old world, between the people and their rulers. Liberty and despotism are preparing for their final conflict, and Liberty looks through the gloom to us for a ray of hope to cheer her in the battle.

Upon the plains of Italy, the battle-smoke wreathes upwards from the initial conflicts of a

struggle, which, to my mind, presages the final liberty of Europe; but it will be an ordeal of fire and blood. The conservative influences which have, for selfish purposes, evoked the demon of war, have also aroused a spirit in the people which cannot be propitiated or allayed.

Are we to remain silent spectators of the scene? Time alone will disclose our part. But in view of our position as a nation, representing that principle of government for which the earnest souls of Europe pant as "the hart for the water-brooks;" in view of the fact, written unmistakably in history, that Providence has assigned to us the solution of the great problem of our race, the capacity of man for selfgovernment, it behoves us to preserve from taint our institutions, and to make our nationality so conspicuous in all true and manly requisites, that it may be a beacon whose rays shall ever shine with an undimmed and certain lustre.

And is the future without its dangers to ourselves? Is our isolated position to protect us from collision with the mighty powers beyond the Atlantic? God grant it may. But with our growth as a nation, our interests have proportionately extended. We are threatening to

overshadow the continent. Our relations with the South-American States that are now involved in civil war, may force us to assert the superior right of a progressive civilization to the control of a land upon which nature has heaped every blessing, over the misrule of semibarbarous governments, which, in the name of liberty, trample upon humanity and law, and employ the superstitions of a degraded church to debase the intellect of the people.

But such a step on our part would arouse the watchful jealousy of foreign powers. If they should deny our right, as the leading government of the continent, to arrange, supervise and control, for the protection of our citizens and the furtherance of our commercial interests, the disordered affairs of our sister republics, war would be the melancholy but inevitable result. Are we prepared for such a struggle? Would the men of '59 breathe the patriotism of '76? Would the spirit of Lexington again animate the citizens? Would our batteries awake the echoes of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane? I pause not for an answer. A patriotism as pure and devoted as that of the Revolution would be exhibited

there would be but one cry, "To

arms;" but one spirit, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

But the patriotism which would rally the people about the national standard, the spirit which would animate the battle-field, must spring from the consciousness of an honest performance of the manifold duties of citizenship. That alone can nerve the arm to strike righthanded blows for country, home, and altar.

The citizen who performs his duties is entitled to reward. Grecian and Roman antiquity decreed triumphal processions, wreaths and crowns, to him who on the battle-field or in the senate had served his country. The reward of the American citizen is the satisfaction of promoting the great cause of human freedom.

The liberty of the ancient republics was restrictive ours is as expansive as the universe; its pulsations beat time to the march of the age, and throb with the heart of humanity. The lands conquered by our arms are blessed with our institutions. The presence of our flag guarantees the privileges of the Constitution. We annex, not alone to impose our civilization, but to confer our liberty. With what pride should the American citizen contemplate the progress of his land! What nobler reward for duty

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