Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more. In other words our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; that it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence.
82. We are All of Us Kings! I want the power where some one can use it. As long as a man is responsible to the people there is no fear of despotism. There's no reigning family in this country. We are all of us Kings. We are the reigning family. And when any man talks about despotism, you may be sure he wants to steal or be up to devilment. If we have any sense, we have got to have localization of brain. If we have any power, we must have centralization. We want centralization of the right kind. The man we choose for our head wants the army in one hand, the navy in the other; and to execute the supreme will of the supreme people.
In the long run the nation that is honest, the people that are industrious, will pass the people that are dishonest, the people that are idle; no matter what grand ancestry they might have had.
To work for others is, in reality, the only way in which a man can work for himself. Selfishness is ignorance. Speculators cannot make unless somebody loses. In the realm of speculation, every success has at least one victim. The harvest reaped by the farmer benefits all and injures none. For him to succeed, it is not necessary that some one should fail. The same is true of all producers--of all laborers.
I despise the doctrine of State sovereignty. I believe in the rights of the States, but not in the sovereignty of the States. States are political conveniences. Rising above States as the Alps above valleys are the rights of man. Rising above the rights of the government even in this Nation are the sublime rights of the people. Governments are good only so long as they protect human rights. But the rights of a man never should be sacrificed upon the altar of the State or upon the altar of the Nation.
I am not only in favor of free speech, but I am also in favor of an absolutely honest ballot. There is one king in this country; there is one emperor; there is one supreme czar; and that is the legally expressed will of the majority of the people. The man who casts an illegal vote, the man who refuses to count a legal vote, poisons the fountain of power, poisons the spring of justice, and is a traitor to the only king in this land. I have always said, and I say again, that the more liberty there is given away the more you have. There is room in this world for us all; there is room enough for all of our thoughts; out upon the intellectual sea there is room for every sail, and in the intellectual air there is space for every wing. A man that exercises a right that he will not give to others is a barbarian. A State that does not allow free speech is uncivilized, and is a disgrace to the American Union.