Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/469

Rh he can inflict no further injury, or until he promises that he will not attempt it again. What is that man doing? He exercises the natural right to provide for his future security by dictating terms of peace to his defeated aggressor.

The Democrats are in the habit of prating to us about the wisdom of the great men who formed the Constitution of the United States. Yes, the Fathers of the Constitution were great men. They were among the wisest of their generation. And now the Democrats will make us believe that these same Fathers of the Constitution were such consummate blockheads as to deprive the Government of this Republic of a right which every government has possessed and exercised since mankind had a history, and which every government, from the very necessity of things, will possess and exercise until the end of things. Nay, a right which every loafer on the street will claim and exercise as a natural right when assailed by another loafer. In support of such a right we do not need the authority of Vattel, Puffendorf and Grotius. We do not need a broad display of legal ingenuity or of metaphysical reasoning. We hear it asserted by the common-sense of mankind. We find it confirmed in the nature of things. We see it written in the book of manifest necessity. It is a right which a government must have, if it has a right to exist at all.

And this the Democrats undertake to deny. Where would the acceptance of their doctrine lead us? Just to the same consequences into which the country would have drifted had, in 1861, the American people accepted the doctrine that the Government of the Republic does not possess the right to coerce rebellious States. I repeat, the two doctrines, although different in terms, are essentially the same in spirit. They mean, simply, that the Government of this Republic has no right to defend its