Liberty in America, if you will admit the distinction, is a growth and
not a creation. The institutions of liberty in America have the same
character. By many centuries of trial, struggle, and contest, through
many years of experience, sometimes joyous, and sometimes sad, the fact
and the institutions of liberty in America have been evolved. It has not
been a work of destruction and creation, but a process of change and
progress. And so it must ever be. Reformation does not often follow
destruction; and they who seek to destroy the institutions of a country
are not its friends in fact, however they may be in purpose. Ignorance
can destroy, but intelligence is required to reform or build up. Let
the prejudice against learning, not common now, but possibly existing in
some minds, be forever banished. Learning is the friend of liberty. Of
this America has had evidence in her own history, and in her observation
of the experience of others. The literary institutions and the
cultivated men of America, like Milton and Hampden in England, preferred
"Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp."
It was the intelligence of the country that everywhere uttered and
everywhere accepted the declaration of the town of Boston, in the
revolutionary struggle, "We can endure poverty, but we disdain slavery."
Ignorance is quicksand on which no stable political structure can be
built; and I predict the future greatness of our beloved state, in those
historical qualities that outlast the ages, from the fact that she is
not tempted by her extent of territory, salubrity of climate, fertility
of soil, or by the presence and promise of any natural source of wealth,
to falter in her devotion to learning and liberty.
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