Now it seems to me that the struggle in this country, the great fight, the roar and din of which we already hear, is a fight against the consolidation of power, the concentration of capital, the diminution of local sovereignty and the dwarfing of the individual citizen. Boston is the home of the one section of a nationalist party that claims that the remedy for all our troubles, the way in which Dives, who sits inside the gate, shall be controlled, and the poor Lazarus who sits outside shall be lifted up, is for the government to usurp the functions of the citizen and take charge of all his affairs. It is the Democratic doctrine that the citizen is the master and that the best guarantee of this government is not garnered powers at the capital, but diffused intelligence and liberty among the people. My friend, General Collins—who, by the way, captured my whole State and absolutely conjured the ladies—when he came down there talked about this to us, and he gave us a train of thought that we have improved to advantage. It is the pride, I believe, of the South, with her simple faith and her homogeneous people, that we elevate there the citizen above the party, and the citizen above everything. We teach a man that his best guide at least is his own conscience, that his sovereignty rests beneath his hat, that his own right arm and his own stout heart are his best dependence; that he should rely on his State for nothing that he can do for himself, and on his government for nothing that his State can do for him; but that he should stand upright and self-respecting, dowering his family in the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, loyal to his Republic, earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building at last his altars above his own hearthstone, and shrining his own liberty in his own heart. That is a sentiment that I would not have been afraid to avow last night. And yet it is mighty good democratic doctrine, too. I went to Washington the other day and I stood on the Capitol hill, and my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country’s Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, of the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there; and I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a Republic that had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged its final uplifting and its regeneration.