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This great war was made possible because Europe has been expecting and preparing for it ever since 1870 and because the governments of Europe did not take either the people or their neighbours into their confidence. President Wilson tried to show while he was president that the people should be fully informed regarding all steps taken by the Government.
Religions, intimately united to the governments of the earth, have been known to exercise a sovereign authority derived from the twofold source of terror and of faith; but when a religion contracts an alliance of this nature, I do not hesitate to affirm that it commits the same error, as a man who should sacrifice his future to his present welfare; and in obtaining a power to which it has no claim, it risks that authority which is rightfully its own.
The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper.
The human affections, like the solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the centre, and become languid in proportion to the expansion of the circle on which they act. On these principles, the attachment of the individual will be first and forever secured by the State governments; they will be a mutual protection and support.
The claims of our citizens upon the South American Governments generally are in a train of settlement, while the principal part of those upon Brazil have been adjusted, and a decree in council ordering bonds to be issued by the minister of the treasury for their amount has received the sanction of His Imperial Majesty.
As the State governments have a power of suspending the habeas corpus act in those cases, it was said, there could be no reason for giving such a power to the general government; since, whenever the State which is invaded, or in which an insurrection takes place, finds its safety requires it, it will make use of that power.
And do you demand that they should annihilate themselves, create freedom, and make revolutions? That is impossible. All revolutions, from the anointing of the first king to the declaration of the Rights of Man, have been freely accomplished by the spirit of the people. Governments have always hindered, oppressed, and crushed them to the ground. They have never made a revolution.
Undoubtedly, governments ought to watch in every way over the preservation of human life; but there are secrets in nature which the imagination alone can penetrate; and I easily conceive that neither the inhabitants nor the strangers who visit it, are disgusted with Rome, by the species of peril to which they are exposed there during the most beautiful seasons of the year."
This course has borne rich fruit in the past, and it is our duty as a nation to preserve the heritage of good repute which a century of right dealing with foreign governments has secured to us.
Profound silence on the part of Governments, and a still more guarded secrecy on the part of conspiring bodies, were practised as the very first principle of all political operations.
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