The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield: Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and LettersBrown, E. E. (Emma Elizabeth)
History
The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield: Twentieth President of the United States, Including Full and Accurate Details of His Eventful Administration, Assassination, Last Hours, Death, Etc., Together with Notable Extracts from His Speeches and Letters
Brown, E. E. (Emma Elizabeth)
Garfield, James A. (James Abram), 1831-1881; Presidents -- United States -- Biography
The great danger which threatens this country is, that our sovereign may
be dethroned or destroyed by corruption. In any monarchy of the world,
if the sovereign be slain or become lunatic, it is easy to put another
in his place, for the sovereign is a person. But our sovereign is the
whole body of voters. If you kill, or corrupt, or render lunatic our
sovereign, there is no successor, no regent to take his place. The
source of our sovereign's supreme danger, the point where his life is
vulnerable, is at the ballot-box, where his will is declared; and if we
cannot stand by that cradle of our sovereign's heir-apparent and protect
it to the uttermost against all assassins and assailants, we have no
government and no safety for the future.
[Remarks, in the House of Representatives, February 11, 1879, on the
Life and Character of Gustave Schleicher.]
We are accustomed to say, and we have heard to-night, that he [Gustave
Schleicher] was born on foreign soil. In one sense that is true; and yet
in a very proper historic sense he was born in our fatherland. One of
the ablest of recent historians begins his opening volume with the
declaration that England is not the fatherland of the English-speaking
people, but the ancient home, the real fatherland of our race, is the
ancient forests of Germany. The same thought was suggested by
Montesquieu long ago, when he declared in his Spirit of Laws that the
British constitution came out of the woods of Germany.
To this day the Teutonic races maintain the same noble traits that
Tacitus describes in his admirable history of the manners and character
of the Germans. We may therefore say that the friend whose memory we
honor to-night is one of the elder brethren of our race. He came to
America direct from our fatherland, and not, like our own fathers, by
the way of England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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