State of the Union Addresses — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
State of the Union Addresses
John Stuart Mill · en
tyranny in a neighboring principality, "the National Convention declared
that she would afford succor and fraternity to all nations who wished to
recover their liberty, and she gave it in charge to the executive power to
give orders to the generals of the French armies to aid all citizens who
might have been or should be oppressed in the cause of liberty." Here was
the false step which led to her subsequent misfortunes. She soon found
herself involved in war with all the rest of Europe. In less than ten years
her Government was changed from a republic to an empire, and finally, after
shedding rivers of blood, foreign powers restored her exiled dynasty and
exhausted Europe sought peace and repose in the unquestioned ascendency of
monarchical principles. Let us learn wisdom from her example. Let us
remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free
institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before.
They were planted in the free charters of self-government under which the
English colonies grew up, and our Revolution only freed us from the
dominion of a foreign power whose government was at variance with those
institutions. But European nations have had no such training for
self-government, and every effort to establish it by bloody revolutions has
been, and must without that preparation continue to be, a failure. Liberty
unregulated by law degenerates into anarchy, which soon becomes the most
horrid of all despotisms. Our policy is wisely to govern ourselves, and
thereby to set such an example of national justice, prosperity, and true
glory as shall teach to all nations the blessings of self-government and
the unparalleled enterprise and success of a free people.