Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln: Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of AmericaBancroft, George
History
Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln: Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America
Bancroft, George
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
capital, or create public works, or develop mines, or borrow money; so
that the imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to
recognise the wisdom of the policy of the republic by adopting it,
could prove only an unremunerating drain on the French treasury for the
support of an Austrian adventurer.
Meantime a new series of momentous questions grows up, and forces
itself on the consideration of the thoughtful. Republicanism has
learned how to introduce into its constitution every element of order,
as well as every element of freedom; but thus far the continuity of its
government has seemed to depend on the continuity of elections. It is
now to be considered how perpetuity is to be secured against foreign
occupation. The successor of Charles the First of England dated his
reign from the death of his father; the Bourbons, coming back after a
long series of revolutions, claimed that the Louis who became king was
the eighteenth of that name. The present Emperor of the French,
disdaining a title from election alone, calls himself Napoleon the
Third. Shall a republic have less power of continuance when invading
armies prevent a peaceful resort to the ballot-box? What force shall it
attach to intervening legislation? What validity to debts contracted
for its overthrow? These momentous questions are, by the invasion of
Mexico, thrown up for solution. A free state once truly constituted
should be as undying as its people: the republic of Mexico must rise
again.
It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that involved the Pope of
Rome in our difficulties so far that he alone among sovereigns
recognised the chief of the Confederate States as a president, and his
supporters as a people; and in letters to two great prelates of the
Catholic church in the United States gave counsels for peace at a time
when peace meant the victory of secession. Yet events move as they are
ordered. The blessing of the Pope at Rome on the head of Duke
Maximilian could not revive in the nineteenth century the
ecclesiastical policy of the sixteenth, and the result is only a new
proof that there can be no prosperity in the state without religious
freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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