Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/210

200 what commonplace ideas, clad in a sonorous, hollow swell of language, which derives its principal charm from the animal vigor and energy with which it is puffed out. [Loud laughter.]

But his speeches do contain one original idea, and I tell you that is a bright one; it belongs all to him; nobody ever advocated it before, and nobody will hereafter. [Laughter.] We have been laboring under the impression that Douglas did not care whether slavery be voted up or down; but we must beg his pardon—it turns out that he does care; for the only original idea he can boast of is, that slavery must necessarily exist for the sake of—variety. [Laughter.] Do not laugh, I pray you—it is a very serious matter—it is the fundamental principle upon which Mr. Douglas's whole statesmanship rests; and as he is the greatest statesman alive, it certainly deserves serious consideration. He tells us that it is the very issue upon which he conducted the canvass in Illinois in 1858;—it is the very ground on which he placed the necessity of his conspiracy bill, and he has peddled it all over the Union in numberless speeches.

The original idea, as expressed in his own language, is simply this: “I assert,” said he, in his speech opening the canvass of 1858, “that the great fundamental principle which underlies our complex system of State and Federal Governments contemplates diversity and dissimilarity in local institutions and domestic affairs of each and every State in the Union, or thereafter to be admitted. I therefore conceive that Mr. Lincoln has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our Government rests. Uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destructive of State rights, of State sovereignty—of personal liberty and personal freedom. Wherever the doctrine of uniformity is proclaimed—that all the States must be free or slave; that all the labor must be