Civil liberty,--American liberty,--that liberty which resides in law, which is protected by great institutions and upheld by the machinery of a popular government,--is not simply the product of a desire, or a determination, to be free. Such liberty comes, if it comes at all, only after serious mistakes,--after frightful deficiencies have taught men that power must be lodged somewhere. It comes when a people have learned, by adversity and disappointment, that a total negation of all authority, and a jealousy of all restraint, can end only in leaving society without the defences and securities which nothing but law can raise for it. It comes when the passions are exhausted, and the rivalries of opposing interests have worn themselves out, in the vain endeavor to reach what reason and justice and self-sacrifice alone can procure. Then, and then only, is the intellect of a nation sure to operate with the fidelity and energy of its native power. Then only does it grasp the principles of freedom with the ability to incorporate them into the practical forms of a public administration whose strength and energy shall give them vitality, and prevent their diffusion into the vagueness of mere abstractions, which return to society the cold and mocking gift of a stone for its craving demand of bread. * * * * * The Convention was a body of great and disinterested men, competent, both morally and intellectually to the work assigned them. High qualities of character are requisite to the formation of a system of government for a wide country with different interests. Mere talent will not do it. Intellectual power and ingenuity alone cannot compass it. There must be a moral completeness in the characters of those who are to achieve such a work; for it does not consist solely in devising schemes, or creating offices, or parcelling out jurisdictions and powers. There must be adaptation, adjustment of conflicting interests, reconciliation of conflicting claims. There must be the recognition and admission of great expedients, and the sacrifice, often, of darling objects of ambition, or of local policy, to the vast central purpose of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Hence it is, that, wherever this mighty work is to be successfully accomplished, there must be a high sense of justice; a power of concession; the qualities of magnanimity and patriotism; and that broad moral sanity of the intellect, which is farthest removed from fanaticism, intolerance, or selfish adhesion either to interest or to opinion. These qualities were preëminently displayed by many of the framers of the Constitution. There was certainly a remarkable amount of talent and intellectual power in that body. There were men in that assembly, whom, for genius in statesmanship, and for profound speculation in all that relates to the science of government, the world has never seen overmatched.