Source: Diman, J. Lewis. The Nation and the Constitution: An Oration Delivered Before the City Authorities and Citizens of Providence, July 4, 1866. Providence: Providence Press Company, 1866. Digitized by Google from the library of Harvard University. Internet Archive.

Mr. Godwin's Speech.

M. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen:

The place, the time, the circumstances—so felicitously blended in your toast—are all calculated to excite in the mind the profoundest thoughts, and to fill the heart with the noblest emotions.

This is Geneva—the little city of the lake—from which, more than any other city of Europe, have gone forth those voices which have controlled the sublime marches of human thought. Thence emanated that grand principle of the Divine Sovereignty, which is now the creed of the churches, and of no churches more than our own. Here, by a singular and yet not unnatural contrast, was first heard that solitary, wild, plaintive cry in behalf of the equality and rights of man, which, at the end of the last century, grew into the lion’s roar and is now the authoritative utterance of the whole people.

Most fitly, M. President, have you coupled the name of Switzerland with that of the United States—twin Republics of the Old and New Worlds, the vanguard and rearguard of liberty—alike devoted to the same beneficent mission of upholding freedom among the nations, and alike unconquerable in that devotion. Ah! long has liberty dwelt among these hills—robed in the verdure of their beautiful valleys, pure as the snow of their summits, immovable as the rocks at their base. Our distinguished and venerable Bryant has said of the mountains:

“—they proclaim
The everlasting creed of liberty.
That creed is written on the untrampled snow;
Thundered by torrents, which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when He sends forth His cold.”

Where, then, so well as in Switzerland—the land of the mountain and the torrent, this nation of political unity and popular rights, this city of intellectual activity and religious independence—where so well can we Americans celebrate our natal day? This is our other home; this is our second country. No walls of aristocratic seclusion frown upon us when we approach these picturesque and lovely cities; no insolent and angry waves roll back upon us an insular arrogance; no palace-guards, the embroidered and gilded minions of tyranny, bid us wait. Rather we come to the Swiss as to our own: their hospitable hands strike ours with a brother’s grasp.

And while around us elsewhere we see the signs of man’s domination over man—overbearing rule, dynastic oppression, family arrogance, selfish caste—in short, the few trampling upon the many until the many grovel in mire and ignorance and poverty and squalor—here the spirit and the body have cast their fetters off. Here, as with us, is recognized that truth of truths, substance of all Christianity, all philosophy, all human hope—that man was not made for governments, nor even made for society, but that all governments and all societies were made for man. (Cheers.)

In other words, he is the end and they the means: their supreme function, their sole and exclusive reason for being, their only justification, is the good which they minister to him. When they have other aims—when they are perverted to more partial or selfish uses—they cease to be legitimate, rightful, useful; they are a curse and a nuisance to the earth. (Cheers.)

That, I repeat, is at bottom the peculiarity of the American and Swiss systems of political organization; that is their excellence, that is their glory. They make man himself—the individual as the universal man, each one of us and every one of us—our development, our happiness, our progress, our mastery of the resources of nature and the facilities and blessings of the social state—the high, the final, the exclusive object of political and civil organization.

Elsewhere we hear a wretched jargon about the divine right of certain dynasties, about the historic preeminence of certain families, about the legitimate privileges of certain classes, their authority to control and govern other classes; not only to control and govern, but to own—to own all the property, to hold all the trusts, to direct even the education of all minds, to say what thoughts they shall think, what truths they may believe; and, most impious of all, they assume to dispense the means of Heaven’s free and universal salvation. (Applause.) But here that silly enfantillage, that miserable sophism, that selfish and odious assumption has passed away; and the Swiss, like the American, acknowledges but one absolute authority—the authority of God over his conscience and heart—and but one absolute right, the right of all men to an equal love and an exact justice. (Cheers.)

The Swiss has done something to evince his fidelity to these frontal principles; and so has the American. Both have sealed their faith in their blood. For long centuries here, the struggle for freedom has gone on; and though it has been less long with us, it has not been less intense. If not our entire history, the last ten years of it have shown where we stand. We have not shrunk from our principles. Though a bitter, painful, aye a terrible cup was presented to us, we drained it to the dregs. Five hundred thousand slain, and a million hearts made desolate, tell the world what liberty is to us, what estimate we set on union. Dearer than life, dearer than father or mother, dearer than sweetheart or wife, is that free, popular, constitutional existence which distinguishes us from others and makes us what we are. (Cheers.)

Thank God that others are at last beginning to discover, not only the greatness of our means but the grandeur of our end. Europe estimates more truly today than ever before the measure and strength of that stupendous experiment—experiment no longer—which we have undertaken in the western world. It is beginning to see, in spite of the boasts of a factitious and pedantic Caesarism, which has no force whatever save that which it insidiously sucks from the egg of democracy, that popular government is not only the most progressive, the most beneficent, the most just—the most beneficent and progressive because the most just—but that it is also, externally as well as internally, the strongest government! No other government could have coped with the difficulties that ours has overcome, could have survived the perils that ours has surmounted. No other government, after the experience of the late years, will willingly dash itself against the Republic, as she sits—solitary and secure, but peaceful and mighty—beyond the seas. (Applause.)

But whatever Europe may feel or think, we Americans can now apply with some little alteration to the whole country the beautiful eulogy which Webster once confined to the State of Massachusetts: “She needs no encomium; there she is; behold her and judge for yourself. The Past, at least, is secure. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. There is Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker-Hill”—to which we add now Chattanooga, Gettysburg, and the Five Forks—“and there they will remain forever! The bones of her sons, fallen in the last great struggle for the Union, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, and there they will lie forever. Where political liberty raised its first voice, where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. But should it be destined to meet with reverses—should folly and madness threaten it—should party strife and blind ambition hawk at and tear it—should fanaticism, under the guise of philanthropy, combine with the banded tyrannies of the Old World to overwhelm it—it will stretch forth its arms, with whatever vigor they may still retain, over the friends who gather around it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest monuments of its own glory and on the very spot of its origin! (Cheers.)

Third toast. — “The day we celebrate—the eighty-ninth anniversary of American Independence; forever dear to the hearts, forever hallowed in the memories of all lovers of national integrity and individual freedom.”
Music: The Star-Spangled Banner.
This was responded to by Rev. Dr. Ames of Lancaster, Mass., whose eloquent speech, however, unfortunately, was not reported.

Fourth toast. — “Civil and Religious Liberty—the purpose of Divine Providence towards all the nations. Eternal honor to its martyrs, its defenders, and its advocates in every land.”
Music: Air Suisse des Montagnes (Buch.).

In announcing this toast, the President said he was quite sure he should give great pleasure to every American present when he introduced, as its respondent, one whose name was known and esteemed in all our country; whose published works lay side by side with the Holy Bible and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress throughout the length and breadth of our land—namely, Dr. Merle d’Aubigné of this city of Geneva. (Cheers.)