the violence of the spirit by which those parties are at this time
governed must be greatly mitigated, if not entirely extinguished, or
consequences will ensue which are appalling to be thought of.

If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance
sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law
and duty, at that point their usefulness ends. Beyond that they become
destructive of public virtue, the parent of a spirit antagonist to that
of liberty, and eventually its inevitable conqueror. We have examples
of republics where the love of country and of liberty at one time were
the dominant passions of the whole mass of citizens, and yet, with the
continuance of the name and forms of free government, not a vestige of
these qualities remaining in the bosoms of any one of its citizens. It
was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that "in the
Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the
Commonwealth had none." Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple
of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and
gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii,
and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus
and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or
pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the
leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils and to
shout for one or the other, as those collected in Gaul or Egypt and the
lesser Asia would furnish the larger dividend. The spirit of liberty
had fled, and, avoiding the abodes of civilized man, had sought
protection in the wilds of Scythia or Scandinavia; and so under the
operation of the same causes and influences it will fly from our
Capitol and our forums. A calamity so awful, not only to our country,
but to the world, must be deprecated by every patriot and every
tendency to a state of things likely to produce it immediately checked.