It is thus that audiences are moved and truth ascertained; and
he will ever be the most successful advocate who can approach the nearest
to this lofty and difficult position.
"Mr. Pierce's views as a constitutional lawyer are such as have been
advocated by the ablest minds of America. They are those which, taking
their rise in the heroic age of the country, were transmitted to him by a
noble father, worthy of the times in which he lived, worthy of that
Revolution which he assisted in bringing about. He believes that the
Constitution was made, not to be subverted, but to be sacredly preserved;
that a republic is perfectly consistent with the conservation of law, of
rational submission to right authority, and of true self-government.
Equally removed from that malignant hostility to order which
characterizes the demagogues who are eager to rise upon the ruins even of
freedom, and from that barren and bigoted narrowness which would oppose
all rational freedom of opinion, he is, in its loftiest and most
ennobling sense, a friend of that Union, without which the honored name
of American citizen would become a by-word among the nations. And if, as
we fervently pray and confidently expect he will, Mr.
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