It is not an objective power
only, but subjective; it is in every State and in every freeman. It is not
in machinery, which can be set in motion and work out certain results, as
if every part of it were iron or steel, and put into action by applied
heat; but in _men_, in minds, in hearts, in the family circle, in the
church, in every throb of patriotism, in every fibre of the husbandman and
the artizan, in the pastor's prayers, and the student's living thoughts.
It is in the _nation_ like latent fire, like a hidden life--evoked in time
of peril, and flashing along the telegraph, breathed in song, uttered in
oratory, thundered from the cannon's mouth, hung out in streaming banners
whose "every hue was born in heaven," felt in firm resolve, illustrated in
response to the call of country and of law. Where is our government? Not
at Washington alone. That is but its symbol. It is throughout all our
Loyal States. It is enthroned on the granite hills of New Hampshire, sends
its voice along the Alleghanies, and on the swelling floods of the
Mississippi, and spreads its wing over the children of the West, even to
the shores of Oregon. It lives in every cottage, and every mansion, and
has a throne in every true, free, noble, Christian heart.
That it is a _good_ government, you have only in imagination to blot from
the face of the earth whatever has grown up under its protection and
encouragement, by the will and the blessing of the Almighty, during the
fourscore years of its existence; level all the cities, sink the commerce,
prostrate the schools and churches, obliterate all the science, history
and thought it has fostered, quench the light of oratory, turn back the
wheel of improvement, and leave us at the opening of 1776; estimate all
the freedom of act, of utterance, of industry; reckon the sum of human
comforts, even of luxuries, it has brought to our hand.
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