Up To The Period Of This Civil War Congress Has Certainly Worked
Well For The United States.
It might be easy to pick holes in it;
to show that some members have been corrupt, others quarrelsome, and
others again impracticable.
But when we look at the circumstances
under which it has been from year to year elected; when we remember
the position of the newly populated States from which the members
have been sent, and the absence throughout the country of that old
traditionary class of Parliament men on whom we depend in England;
when we think how recent has been the elevation in life of the
majority of those who are and must be elected, it is impossible to
deny them praise for intellect, patriotism, good sense, and
diligence. They began but sixty years ago, and for sixty years
Congress has fully answered the purpose for which it was
established. With no antecedents of grandeur, the nation, with its
Congress, has made itself one of the five great nations of the
world. And what living English politician will say even now, with
all its troubles thick upon it, that it is the smallest of the five?
When I think of this, and remember the position in Europe which an
American has been able to claim for himself, I cannot but
acknowledge that Congress on the whole has been conducted with
prudence, wisdom, and patriotism.
The question now to be asked is this - Have the powers of Congress
been sufficient, or are they sufficient, for the continued
maintenance of free government in the States under the Constitution?
I think that the powers given by the existing Constitution to
Congress can no longer be held to be sufficient; and that if the
Union be maintained at all, it must be done by a closer assimilation
of its congressional system to that of our Parliament. But to that
matter I must allude again, when speaking of the existing
Constitution of the States.
CHAPTER III.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
I have seen various essays purporting to describe the causes of this
civil war between the North and South; but they have generally been
written with the view of vindicating either one side or the other,
and have spoken rather of causes which should, according to the
ideas of their writers, have produced peace, than of those which
did, in the course of events, actually produce war. This has been
essentially the case with Mr. Everett, who in his lecture at New
York, on the 4th of July, 1860, recapitulated all the good things
which the North has done for the South, and who proved - if he has
proved anything - that the South should have cherished the North
instead of hating it. And this was very much the case also with Mr.
Motley in his letter to the London Times. That letter is good in
its way, as is everything that comes from Mr. Motley, but it does
not tell us why the war has existed.
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