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[491] your obedience and support as long as you hold office under the Federal Government.

When the tempter entered the garden of Eden and induced our common mother to offend against the law which God had given to her through Adam, he was the first teacher of that “higher law” which sets the will of the individual above the solemn rule which he is bound, as a part of every community, to observe. From the effect of the introduction of that higher law in the garden of Eden, and the fall consequent upon it, came sin into the world; and from sin came death and banishment and subjugation, as the punishment of sin; the loss of life, unfettered liberty, and perfect happiness followed from that first great law which was given by God to fallen man.

Why, then, shall we talk about natural rights? Who is to define them? Where is the judge who is to sit over the court to try natural rights? What is the era at which you will fix the date by which you will determine the breadth, the length, and the depth of those called the rights of nature? Shall it be after the fall, when the earth was covered with thorns, and man had to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow? Or shall it be when there was equality between the sexes, when he lived in the garden, when all his wants were supplied, and when thorns and thistles were unknown on the face of the earth? Shall it be then? Shall it be after the flood, when, for the first sin committed after the waters retired from the face of the earth, the doom of slavery was fixed upon the mongrel descendants of Ham? If after the flood, and after that decree, how idle is all this prating about natural rights as standing above the obligations of civil government! The Constitution is the law supreme to every American. It is the plighted faith of our fathers; it is the hope of our posterity. I say, then, I come not to argue questions outside of or above the Constitution, but to plead the cause of right, of law and order, under the Constitution, and to plead it to those who have sworn to abide by that obligation.

One of the fruitful sources, as I hold it, of the errors which prevail in our country, is the theory that this is a Government of one people; that the Government of the United States was formed by a mass. The Government of the United States is a compact between the sovereign members who formed it; and, if there be one feature common to all the colonies planted upon the shores of America, it is desire for community independence. It was for this the Puritan, the Huguenot, the Catholic, the Quaker, the Protestant, left the land of their nativity, and, guided by the shadows thrown by the fires of European persecution, they sought and found the American refuge of civil and religious freedom. While they existed as separate and distinct colonies they were not forebearing toward each other. They oppressed opposite religions. They did not come here with the enlarged idea of no established religion. The Puritans drove out the Quakers; the Church-of-England men drove out the Catholics. Persecution reigned through the colonies, except, perhaps, that of the Catholic colony of Maryland; but the rule was—persecution. Therefore, I say the common idea, and the only common idea, was community independence—the right of each independent people to do as they pleased in their domestic affairs.

The Declaration of Independence was made by the colonies, each for itself. The recognition of their independence was not for the colonies united, but for each of the colonies which had maintained its independence; and so, when the

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