"Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our government was not a perfect government, it was a good government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths' shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Government
315 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Government →
Related Quotes
""Whatever is, is not," is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law whi…"
"I am for Peace, for Retrenchment, and for Reform,—thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party."
"States are great engines moving slowly."
"Yet if thou didst but know how little wit governs this mighty universe."
"Perish commerce. Let the constitution live!"
"England is the mother of parliaments."
"Adeo ut omnes imperii virga sive bacillum vere superius inflexum sit."
"It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king."
"Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King."
"Well, will anybody deny now that the Government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government…"