That such is your idea of the constitutional duties and functions of the government, is shown by different parts of your address: but more fully, perhaps, by this: The large variety of diverse and _competing interests_ subject to _federal control, persistently seeking recognition of their claims_, need give us no fear that the greatest good of the greatest number will fail to be accomplished, if, _in the halls of national legislation_, that spirit of amity and mutual concession shall prevail, in which the constitution had its birth. If this involves the _surrender_ or _postponement_ of _private interests_, and the _abandonment_ of _local advantages_, compensation will be found in the assurance that thus the _common interest_ is subserved, and _the general welfare_ advanced. What is all this but saying that the government is not at all an institution for "doing equal and exact justice to all men," or for the impartial protection of all men's _rights_; but that it is its proper business to take sides, for and against, a "large variety of diverse and _competing interests_"; that it has this "large variety of diverse and _competing interests_" under its arbitrary "_control_"; that it can, at its pleasure, make such laws as will give success to some of them, and insure the defeat of others; that these "various, diverse, and _competing interests_" will be "_persistently seeking recognition of their claims_ ... in _the halls of national legislation_,"--that is, will be "persistently" clamoring for laws to be made in their favor; that, in fact, "the halls of national legislation" are to be mere arenas, into which the government actually invites the advocates and representatives of all the selfish schemes of avarice and ambition that unprincipled men can devise; that these schemes will there be free to "_compete_" with each other in their corrupt offers for government favor and support; and that it is to be the proper and ordinary business of the lawmakers to listen to all these schemes; to adopt some of them, and sustain them with all the money and power of the government; and to "postpone," "abandon," oppose, and defeat all others; it being well known, all the while, that the lawmakers will, _individually_, favor, or oppose, these various schemes, according to their own irresponsible will, pleasure, and discretion,--that is, according as they can better serve their own personal interests and ambitions by doing the one or the other. Was a more thorough scheme of national villainy ever invented?