self-sustaining liberty
Let American liberty be an intelligent liberty, and therefore a
self-sustaining liberty. Freedom, more or less complete, has been found
in two conditions of life. Man, in a rude state, where his condition
seemed to be normal, rather than the result of a process of mental and
moral degeneracy, has often possessed a large share of independence; but
this should by no means be confounded with what in America is called
liberty. The independence of the savage, or nomad, is manifested in the
absence of law; but the liberty of an American citizen is the power to
do whatever may be beneficial to himself, and not injurious to his
neighbor nor to the state. The first leaves self-protection and
self-regulation to the individual, while the latter restrains the
aggressive tendencies of all for the security of each. The first is
natural equality without law; the second is natural equality before the
law. With the first, might makes right; with the latter, right makes
might. With the first, the power of the law, or of the will of an
individual or clan, is in the rigor and success of execution; with the
latter, the power of the law is in the justice of its demand. We, as a
people, have passed the savage and nomadic state, and can return to it
only after a long and melancholy process of decay and change, out of
which ultimately might come a new and savage race of men. This, then, is
not our immediate, even if it be a possible danger. But we are to guard
against intellectual, political, and moral degeneracy. We are, through
family, religious, and public education, to take security of the
childhood and youth of the land for the preservation of the institutions
we have, and for the growth, greatness, and justice, of the republic.
Liberty in America, if you will admit the distinction, is a growth and
not a creation. The institutions of liberty in America have the same
character. By many centuries of trial, struggle, and contest, through
many years of experience, sometimes joyous, and sometimes sad, the fact
and the institutions of liberty in America have been evolved. It has not
been a work of destruction and creation, but a process of change and
progress. And so it must ever be. Reformation does not often follow
destruction; and they who seek to destroy the institutions of a country
are not its friends in fact, however they may be in purpose. Ignorance
can destroy, but intelligence is required to reform or build up. Let
the prejudice against learning, not common now, but possibly existing in
some minds, be forever banished. Learning is the friend of liberty. Of
this America has had evidence in her own history, and in her observation
of the experience of others. The literary institutions and the
cultivated men of America, like Milton and Hampden in England, preferred
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