When, on the organization of our Government under the Constitution, the
President of the United States delivered his inaugural address to the
two Houses of Congress, he said to them, and through them to the country
and to mankind, that--

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the
republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as
_deeply_, as _finally_, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands
of the American people.


And the House of Representatives answered Washington by the voice of
Madison:

We adore the Invisible Hand which has led the American people, through
so many difficulties, to cherish a conscious responsibility for the
destiny of republican liberty.


More than seventy-six years have glided away since these words were
spoken; the United States have passed through severer trials than were
foreseen; and now, at this new epoch in our existence as one nation,
with our Union purified by sorrows and strengthened by conflict and
established by the virtue of the people, the greatness of the occasion
invites us once more to repeat with solemnity the pledges of our fathers
to hold ourselves answerable before our fellow-men for the success of
the republican form of government. Experience has proved its sufficiency
in peace and in war; it has vindicated its authority through dangers and
afflictions, and sudden and terrible emergencies, which would have
crushed any system that had been less firmly fixed in the hearts of the