晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 28. A Divided House Cannot Stand

[00:00.65]Passage 28. A Divided House Cannot Stand

[00:06.89]If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending,

[00:12.57]we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.

[00:16.62]We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object

[00:23.84]and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.

[00:28.88]Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased,

[00:35.44]but has constantly augmented.

[00:37.96]In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.

[00:43.65]“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

[00:47.26]I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

[00:53.71]I do not expect the Union to be dissolved;

[00:56.89]I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

[01:03.45]It will become all one thing, or all the other.

[01:07.94]Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it,

[01:12.97]and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that

[01:17.35]it is in the course of ultimate extinction,

[01:20.20]or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,

[01:26.97]old as well as new, North as well as South.

[01:30.91]Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

[01:34.63]Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination

[01:41.20]—piece of machinery,so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.

[01:49.07]Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do,

[01:54.21]and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction,and trace,

[02:01.22]if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design

[02:07.67]and concert of action

among its chief architects from the beginning.