But
In Such A Matter I Do Not Think It Fair To Judge Them By Their
Conduct In Such A Moment As The Present.
That this is the very
moment in which to judge of the efficiency of their institutions
generally, of the
Aptitude of those institutions for the security of
the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a
storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to
her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even
though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her
port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in
spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas
corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If
it be that the people, when the war is over, shall consent to live
under a military or other dictatorship, that they shall quietly
continue their course as a nation without recovery of their rights
of freedom, then we shall have to say that their institutions were
not founded in a soil of sufficient depth, and that they gave way
before the first high wind that blew on them. I myself do not
expect such a result.
I think we must admit that the Americans have received from their
government, or rather from their system of policy, that aid and
furtherance which they required from it; and, moreover, such aid and
furtherance as we expect from our system of government.
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