The truth of this doctrine becomes yet more illustrated by a quite contrary historical fact in France.  Whatever have been the changes of government in that great country—­and many they have been, to be sure—­we have seen a Convention, a Directorate, Consuls, and one Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the Citizen King, and the Republic; Through all these different experiments centralization was the keynote of the institutions of France—­power always centralized; omnipotence always vested somewhere.  And, remarkable indeed, France has never yet raised one single man to the seat of power, who has not sacrificed his country’s freedom to his personal ambition!

It is sorrowful indeed, but it is natural.  It is in the garden of centralization that the venomous plant of ambition thrives.  I dare confidently affirm, that in your great country there exists not a single man through whose brains has ever passed the thought, that he would wish to raise the seat of his ambition upon the ruins of your country’s liberty, if he could.  Such a wish is impossible in the United States.  Institutions react upon the character of nations.  He who sows wind will reap storm.  History is the revelation of Providence.  The Almighty rules by eternal laws not only the material but also the moral world; and as every law is a principle, so every principle is a law.  Men as well as nations are endowed with free-will to choose a principle, but, that once chosen, the consequences must be accepted.

With self-government is freedom, and with freedom is justice and patriotism.  With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells despotism.  Happy your great country, sir, for being so warmly attached to that great principle of self-government.  Upon this foundation your fathers raised a home to freedom more glorious than the world has ever seen.  Upon this foundation you have developed it to a living wonder of the world.  Happy your great country, sir! that it was selected by the blessing of the Lord to prove the glorious practicability of a federative union of many sovereign States, all preserving their State-rights and their self-government, and yet united in one—­every star beaming with its own lustre, but altogether one constellation on mankind’s canopy.

Upon this foundation your free country has grown to prodigious power in a surprizingly brief period, a power which attracts by its fundamental principle.  You have conquered by it more in seventy-five years than Rome by arms in centuries.  Your principles will conquer the world.  By the glorious example of your freedom, welfare, and security, mankind is about to become conscious of its aim.  The lesson you give to humanity will not be lost.  The respect for State-rights in the Federal Government of America, and in its several States, will become an instructive example for universal toleration, forbearance, and justice to the future States, and Republics of Europe.  Upon this basis those mischievous questions of language-nationalities