Page:Justice and Jurisprudence - 1889.pdf/204



"Nor yield I now: my rage shall burn the same; Eternal wrongs eternal vengeance claim; Still will I rise a more inveterate foe, And, dead, pursue them from the shades below."&mdash;.

"The assassination of two Presidents, one inaugurated at the beginning, the other at the close of this period, while a cause of profound national grief, reflects no dishonor upon popular government. The murder of Lincoln was the maddened and aimless blow of an expiring rebellion. The murder of Garfield was the fatuous impulse of a debauched conscience if not a disordered brain. Neither crime had its origin in the political institutions or its growth in the social organization of the country. Both crimes received the execration of all parties and all sections. In the universal horror which they inspired, in the majestic supremacy of law which they failed to disturb, may be read the strongest proof of the stability of a government which is founded upon the rights, fortified by the intelligence, inwrought with the virtues of the people. For, as it was said of old, wisdom and knowledge shall be stability, and the work of righteousness shall be peace."&mdash;.

"The true question is, shall the judiciary be permanent, or fluctuate with the tide of public opinion?"&mdash;.

"Behold (she cried) what power is in my hand! I rule your fates with uncontrolled command: My will can keep you from ethereal light, The hapless prisoners of eternal night."&mdash;.

"Immortal light beams struggling through the black vapors of death."&mdash;.

"I wish your example in tracing our constitutional history through its earlier periods could be followed by our public men of the present generation. The few surveyors of the past seem to have forgotten what they once knew, and those of the present to shrink from such researches, though it must be allowed by all that the best key to the text of the Constitution, as of a law, is to be found in the contemporary state of things, and the maladies or deficiencies which were to be provided for."&mdash;.

"The national government has in these twenty years proved its strength in war, its conservatism in peace. The self-restraint which the citizens 153