constitution; and national and constitutional are convertible terms.
[Applause.]

Your candidate for the high office of governor--whom I have been once
or twice on the point of calling your governor, and whom I hope I may
be able soon to call so, [applause]--in his remarks to you has
presented the same idea in another form. And well may Massachusetts
orators, without even perceiving what they are saying, utter
sentiments which lie at the foundation of your colonial as well as
your revolutionary history, which existed in Massachusetts before the
revolution, and have existed since, whenever the true spirit which
comes down from the revolutionary sires has been aroused into
utterance within her limits. [Applause.]

It has been not only, my friends, in this increasing and mutual
dependence of interest that we have formed new bonds. Those bonds are
both material and mental. Every improvement in the navigation of a
river, every construction of a railroad, has added another link to the
chain which encircles us, another facility for interchange and new
achievements, whether it has been in arts or in science, in war or in
manufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled success
has constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has offered to
us new sentiments of nationality.

Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, which
follow in the course of our political day? is it because the sun is
declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening; or are
they, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the
sun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian
splendor? Are they but evanescent clouds that flit across but cannot