Madison's Report presented a faithful synopsis of the principles of the old Republicans upon fundamental questions,--those which relate to the powers of government and to the responsibilities under which they should be exercised,--the only questions which gave rise to permanent political parties. Whilst divisions in regard to particular measures disappear with the falling off of interest in the subjects of them, those which I have described as growing out of such primordial tenets are kept alive as long as the government itself endures. So it has been in all countries where there has been any appreciable degree of freedom of opinion. England is almost, if not altogether, the only country whose institutions are sufficiently analogous to ours to admit of useful comparisons. From the time when her sovereigns traced their authority from God, and acknowledged responsibility to Him alone for the manner of its exercise, to the Revolution of 1688, by which absolutism was forever abolished and government declared to be a trust for the abuse of which the sovereign is responsible to the people, and always since, her party divisions, regarded as national, have had relation to the powers of government and to the degrees of responsibility under which they should be exercised. Whether these parties were called Cavaliers and Roundheads, Presbyterians and Jacobites, Whig and Tory, or Conservatives and Liberals, such have always been the essential dividing points. Like ourselves they have had a succession of exciting public questions not of this character which have for a time divided the community, and were earnestly contested, but which passed away without making material inroads upon ancient party divisions, and the latter resumed their sway when the temporary interruption ceased in much the same general array they would have presented if it had not occurred. I have said that Madison's report was the flag under which the Republicans conquered. It defines the constitutional creed by which they were influenced in the administration of the government for twenty-four years successively, and under which the Democratic party, their successors, have since held the reins of the Federal Government, with infrequent exceptions--the latter never extending to two Presidential terms, and always the result of special circumstances having little bearing upon general politics.