has since followed. A people who were able to surmount in their
infant state such great perils would be more competent as they
rose into manhood to repel any which they might meet in their
progress. Their physical strength would be more adequate to
foreign danger, and the practice of self-government, aided by the
light of experience, could not fail to produce an effect equally
salutary on all those questions connected with the internal
organization. These favorable anticipations have been realized.

In our whole system, national and State, we have shunned all the
defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the
ancient Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility
and a people, or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the
one instance there was a perpetual conflict between the orders in
society for the ascendency, in which the victory of either
terminated in the overthrow of the government and the ruin of the
state; in the other, in which the people governed in a body, and
whose dominions seldom exceeded the dimensions of a county in one
of our States, a tumultuous and disorderly movement permitted only
a transitory existence. In this great nation there is but one
order, that of the people, whose power, by a peculiarly happy
improvement of the representative principle, is transferred from
them, without impairing in the slightest degree their sovereignty,
to bodies of their own creation, and to persons elected by
themselves, in the full extent necessary for all the purposes of
free, enlightened and efficient government. The whole system is
elective, the complete sovereignty being in the people, and every
officer in every department deriving his authority from and being
responsible to them for his conduct.