When our fathers formed the national Constitution, they made it their duty to secure to every State a republican form of government. No government can be republican in form, unless it is so in substance and in fact; based upon the consent of the governed. After the troublesome war we have just passed through, we are called upon not only to reconstruct the ten unrepresented States of the nation, but to purify the republicanism of our government in the Northern States and make it more consistent with our professions. It is a fit time, then, to take up the subject of suffrage, and to base it upon a well-established principle. Some say that the right of suffrage is a privilege, to be given or withheld at pleasure. That does not seem to me a very safe foundation for so important a right. It is either a privilege or a natural right. If we recognize it as a natural right we have a peaceable, safe, legal mode of resistance against the disfranchisement of the people. If we admit it to be a privilege to be granted or withheld, no man and no woman has any legal right to interpose any objection to his own disfranchisement. But I see that our friend has come in who was expected first to address you, and I will not take up more of your time. PARKER PILLSBURY was next introduced and said: The resolutions just read refer to the comparative longevity of nations and of individual men, and of their respective performance, while existence lasts. Among nations have arisen Franklins and Washingtons, Humboldts and Howards; but what individual nation of any period has been the Plato or Pythagoras, the Howard or the Humboldt of all the rest? or has achieved proportionally, so long a life? or expired at last in sunsets of serenity and glory, and been embalmed and enshrined in the tears and gratitude of mankind? It is often said that the life of a nation is as the life of an individual; with beginning, progress, decay, and dissolution. But the resemblance holds only in part. Consciousness comes to an individual, and self-respect; and from that hour growth and greatness (it may be) begin. But with nations it is not so. The world has not made the same demand of nations as of individuals, and so nothing is expected of them. Nations, hitherto, were badly brought up. In the light of a thousand years hence, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will be "darker ages" than the eighth and ninth are to-day. Accepting three-score and ten as the common life of an individual, a degree at least of honorable manhood is often achieved, both in personal virtues, and in noble performance. The canticles of the Almanac used to run: