To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of
legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement
for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety
the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements
of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation
of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might
impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write
what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation,
announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of
course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in
common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this
sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases
to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the
minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and
to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite
with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that
harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but
dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land
that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and
suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political
intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody
persecutions.
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