Oration on the Power and Value of National Liberty (p. 3).
Need I enlarge further on this gloomy side of the subject to raise in your souls an abhorrence of tyranny? Need I add to this black catalogue the bloody persecutions, buntings, banishments, and imprisonments for religion, that have disgraced every country in Europe, where men were compelled to act contrary to their conscience or suffer death? Where the flames were kindled; the images of saints presented, and the poor sufferer left to his choice, to worship the one, or be thrown into the other. Where gloomy inquisitions were erected, and wheels, racks, and other instruments of torture, set to work in their dismal dungeons, the bare recital of whose scenes would be sufficient to freeze the blood with horror.
Let no man say that the dangers of a repetition of these things are past. The spirit and principles that led to these atrocities remain to this day, interwoven with, and incorporated into almost all the old governments of Europe, and will, if not thoroughly reformed, burst out into such, and perhaps much more outrageous persecutions, unless the righteous Judge and Great Ruler of the universe has already sealed their universal downfall and total destruction.
From these dreary and distressing scenes, let us now turn to that glorious deliverer, that illustrious benefactress of mankind, before whose august presence tyrants expire, and all those horrors vanish like the shades of night before the splendour of the rising sun. In this western woody world, far from the contaminating influence of the European politics, has the great temple of Liberty been erected. Under no government on earth is so large, so equal a proportion of civil and religious freedom enjoyed by every individual citizen. What are the governments of the old world but huge devouring monsters, gorging their ferocious maws with the hard-earned morsels of the oppressed multitude, drinking up their tears, and sporting with their bloody sufferings? Read their histories—visit their countries—converse with their most intelligent inhabitants—and the more you see, and hear, and experience, the more you will love and venerate this great, this stupendous, and, as I trust, everlasting monument of the power and value of liberty, which you and your fathers have erected for the refuge, the happiness, and inheritance of unborn millions. Indeed, gentlemen, I cannot more strikingly illustrate the power, and demonstrate the value of liberty, than by giving you the outlines of this immense structure, and contrasting it with the fairest and most boasted system of governments that kings and their sycophants can produce.
Here the great body of the people, of which this respectable audience form a part, are the fountain of all power, and their will the foundation on which the whole superstructure of government is erected. By your voice it was called into existence, for your benefit it is altered and improved, by your energy and talents it is supported and directed. You make, or you unmake laws—you declare war, or you proclaim peace. Not, indeed, in your own individual persons, but in the persons of your real representatives. From the wisest and most faithful of your fellow-citizens, you select men to perform the great duties of government. Their turn of duty over, if they have shown themselves worthy of your confidence, they are re-appointed; if not, they descend again into the rank of a private citizen. In the exercise of this right, by the people themselves, lies the chief excellence of a republican form of government; as it not only makes the representatives responsible to, and dependent on the people, as they ought to be, but provides an effectual remedy for almost every abuse, by enabling the people to remove from the great councils of the nation, those men whose measures and designs may be deemed hostile to their liberties. How different this from those wretched countries of Europe, where the voice of the people is totally disregarded, or treated with the utmost contempt! Where two or three men of property appoint a nominal representative for thousands, and where hundreds of thousands have no representative at all. Where those who fight their battles, cultivate their fields, and crown their tables with every luxury, are looked down on as beings of an inferior species, and branded with the opprobrious epithet of the swinish multitude; where their haughty rulers are born kings, bishops, and legislators, though nature, perhaps, has made them fools; and where these important and awful offices, on the proper management of which the lives and welfare of so many millions depend, descend as an inheritance, from father to son, however weak, wicked, or unprincipled.
Universal liberty of conscience, in matters of religion, is here established on the most liberal ground. Every citizen who believes in one Supreme Being, is eligible, with the exceptions of some slight considerations of age and residence, to the highest places of trust and honour, and may worship God as may seem most agreeable to his conscience. Compare this with the churches of Europe, as established by law—with the despotism of the Romish church in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, to whose creed every officer of government must conform, or affect to conform, and where the people are compelled to support, at an enormous expence, a multitude of priests, monks, friars, &c., who swarm, like the devouring locusts, over the face of the whole country, and insolently claim the tenth of all the produce of the industrious farmer, even to his fowls and to his chickens. There their rulers, arrogate to themselves dominion over the soul as well as the body, their laws and forms must be rigidly observed, even in violation of conscience itself. The arbitrary act of religious persecution, not long ago exhibited in one of these countries, cannot yet be forgotten, where a poor man was committed to prison for life for refusing to swear in a.court of justice, though he offered to affirm, but was afterwards under the necessity, in order to save a small family from starving, to comply with the law, and to swear contrary to his conscience.*
* See the Trial of Thomas Muir.