The men of that generation did not hesitate to say that every people has
a right to choose its own forms of government--not once, but as often as
it pleases--and to accommodate those forms of government to its existing
interests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to alter is the
fundamental principle of self-government.

We are just as much under compulsion to study the particular
circumstances of our own day as the gentlemen were who sat in this hall
and set us precedents, not of what to do but of how to do it. Liberty
inheres in the circumstances of the day. Human happiness consists in the
life which human beings are leading at the time that they live. I can
feed my memory as happily upon the circumstances of the revolutionary
and constitutional period as you can, but I cannot feed all my purposes
with them in Washington now. Every day problems arise which wear some
new phase and aspect, and I must fall back, if I would serve my
conscience, upon those things which are fundamental rather than upon
those things which are superficial, and ask myself this question, How
are you going to assist in some small part to give the American people
and, by example, the peoples of the world more liberty, more happiness,
more substantial prosperity; and how are you going to make that
prosperity a common heritage instead of a selfish possession? I came
here to-day partly in order to feed my own spirit. I did not come in
compliment. When I was asked to come I knew immediately upon the
utterance of the invitation that I had to come, that to be absent would
be as if I refused to drink once more at the original fountains of
inspiration for our own Government.

The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very great advantage
over us, ladies and gentlemen, in this one particular: Life was simple
in America then. All men shared the same circumstances in almost equal