If the Future which you seek consists in this: that these thirtyone states shall continue to exist for a period as long as human foresight is allowed to anticipate after-coming events; that they shall be all the while free; that they shall remain distinct and independent in domestic economy, and nevertheless be only one in commerce and foreign affairs; that there shall arise from among them and within their common domain even more than thirty-one other equal states alike free, independent, and united; that the borders of the federal republic, so peculiarly constituted, shall be extended so that it shall greet the sun when he touches the tropic, and when he sends his glancing rays toward the polar circle, and shall include even distant islands in either ocean; that our population, now counted by tens of millions, shall ultimately be reckoned by hundreds of millions; that our wealth shall increase a thousand fold, and our commercial connections shall be multiplied, and our political influence be enhanced in proportion with this wide development, and that mankind shall come to recognize in us a successor of the few 'great states which have alternately borne commanding sway in the world-if this, and only this, is desired, then I am free to say that if, as you will readily promise, our public and private virtues shall be preserved, nothing seems to me more certain than the attainment of this future, so surpassingly comprehensive and magnificent.

Indeed, such a future seems to be only a natural consequence of what has already been secured. Why, then, shall it not be attained? Is not the field as free for the expansion indicated as it was for that which has occurred? Are not the national resources immeasurably augmented and continually increasing? With telegraphs and railroads crossing the Detroit, the Niagara, the St. Johns and the St. Lawrence rivers, with steamers on the lakes of Nicaragua, and a railroad across the isthmus of Panama, and with negotiations in progress for passages over Tehuantepec and Darien, with a fleet in Hudson's bay and another at Bhering's straits, and with yet another exploring the La Plata, and with an armada at the gates of Japan, with Mexico ready to divide on the question of annexation, and with the Sandwich islands suing to us for our sovereignty, it is quite clear to us that the motives to enlargement are even more active than they ever were heretofore, and that the public energies, instead of being relaxed, are gaining new vigor.

Is the nation to become suddenly weary, and so to waver and fall off from the pursuit of its high purposes? When did any vigorous nation ever become weary even of hazardous and exhausting martial conquests? Our conquests, on the contrary, are chiefly peaceful, and thus far have proved productive of new wealth and strength. Is a paralysis to fall upon the national brain? On the contrary, what political constitution has ever, throughout an equal period, exhibited greater elasticity and capacity for endurance?

Is the union of the states to fail? Does its strength indeed grow less with the multiplication of its bonds? Or does its value diminish with the increase of the social and political interests which it defends and protects? Far otherwise. For all practical purposes bearing on the great question, the steam engine, the iron road, the electric telegraph, all of which are newer than the Union, and the metropolitan press, which is no less wonderful in its working than they, have already obliterated state boundaries and produced a physical and moral centralism more complete and perfect than monarchical ambition ever has forged or can forge. Do you reply, nevertheless, that the Union rests on the will of the several states, and that, no matter what prudence or reason may dictate, popular passion may become excited and rend it asunder? Then I rejoin, When did the American people ever give way to such impulses? They are, practically, impassive. You remind me that faction has existed, and that only recently it was bold and violent. I answer, that it was emboldened by popular timidity, and yet that even then it succumbed. Loyalty to the Union is not, in one or many states only, but in all the states, the strongest of all public passions. It is stronger, I doubt not, than the love of justice or even the love of equality, which have acquired a strength here never known among mankind before. A nation may well despise threats of sedition that has never known but one traitor, and this will be learned fully by those who shall hereafter attempt to arrest any great national movement by invoking from their grave the obsolete terrors of disunion.

But you apprehend foreign resistance. Well, where is our enemy? Whence shall he come? Will he arise on this continent? Canada has great resources, and begins to give signs of a national spirit. But Canada is not yet independent of Great Britain. And she will be quite too weak to be formidable to us when her emancipation shall

have taken place. Moreover, her principles, interests, and sympathies assimilate to our own just in the degree that she verges toward separation from the parent country. Canada, although a province of Great Britain, is already half annexed to the United States. She will ultimately become a member of this confederacy, if we will consent an ally, if we will not allow her to come nearer. At least, she never can be an adversary. Will Mexico, or Nicaragua, or Guatemala, or Ecuador, or Peru, all at once become magically cured of the diseases inherited from aboriginal and Spanish parentage, and call up armies from under the earth, and navies from the depths of the sea, and thus become the Rome that shall resist and overthrow this overspreading Carthage of ours? Or are we to receive our deathstroke at the hand of Brazil, doubly cursed as she is, above all other American states, by her adoption of the two most absurd institutions remaining among men, European monarchy and American slavery?

Is an enemy to come forth from the islands in adjacent seas? Where, then, shall we look for him? On the Antilles, or on the Bermudas, or on the Bahamas? Which of the conflicting social elements existing together, yet unmixed, there, is ultimately to prevail ? Will it be Caucasian or African? Can those races not only combine, but become all at once aggressive and powerful?

Shall we look for an adversary in Europe? Napoleon said at St Helena, "America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations." Since when have those nations grown wise? If they have at last become wise, how is it that America has nevertheless not ceased to grow? But what European state will oppose us? Will Great Britain? If she fears to grapple with Russia advancing toward Constantinople on the way to India, though not only her prestige but even her empire is threatened, will she be bold enough to come out of her way to seek an encounter with us? Who will feed and pay her artisans while she shall be engaged in destroying her American debtors and the American consumers of her fabrics? Great Britain has enough to do in replacing in Ireland the population that island has yielded to us, in subjecting Africa, in extending her mercantile dominion in Asia, and in perpetually reädjusting the crazy balance of power in Europe, so essential to her safety. We have fraternal relations with Switzerland, the only republic yet lingering on that continent. Which of the despotic powers

existing there in perpetual terror of the contagion of American principles will assail us, and thus voluntarily hasten on that universal war of opinion which is sure to come at some future time, and which, whenever it shall have come, whether it be sooner or later, can end only in the subversion of monarchy and the establishment of republicanism on its ruins throughout the world?

Certainly no one expects the nations of Asia to be awakened by any other influences than our own from the lethargy into which they sunk nearly three thousand years ago, under the spells of superstition and caste. If they could be roused and invigorated now, would they spare their European oppressors and smite their American benefactors? Nor has the time yet come, if indeed it shall come within many hundred years, when Africa, emerging from her primeval barbarism, shall vindicate the equality of her sable races in the rights of human nature, and visit upon us, the latest, the least guilty and the most repentant of all offenders, the wrongs she has so long suffered at the hands of so many of the Caucasian races.

No! no, we cannot indeed penetrate the Eternal counsels, but, reasoning from what is seen to what is unseen, deducing from the past probable conjectures of the future, we are authorized to conclude that if the national virtue shall prove sufficient the material progress of the United States, which equally excites our own pride and the admiration of mankind, is destined to indefinite continuance.

But is this material progress, even to the point which has been indicated, the whole of the future which we desire? It is seen at once that it includes no high intellectual achievement, and no extraordinary refinement of public virtue, while it leaves entirely out of view the improvement of mankind. Now there certainly is a political philosophy which teaches that nations like individuals are equal, moral, social, responsible persons, existing not for objects of merely selfish advantage and enjoyment, but for the performance of duty, which duty consists in elevating themselves and all mankind as high as possible in knowledge and virtue; that the human race is one in its origin, its rights, its duties, and its destiny, that throughout the rise, progress, and decline of nations, one Divine purpose runs-the increasing felicity and dignity of human nature-and that true greatness or glory, whether of individuals or of nations, is justly measured, not by the territory they compass, or the wealth they

accumulate, or the fear they inspire, but by the degree in which they promote the accomplishment of that great and beneficent design of the Creator of the universe.

"The great end and object of life," said Socrates, "is the perfection of the intellect, the great moral duty of man is knowledge, and the object of all knowledge is one, namely, Truth, the Good, the Beautiful, the Divine Reason."

So also Plato taught that "Man ought to strive after and devote himself to the contemplation of the ONE, the ETERNAL, the INFINITE." Cicero wrote, "There are those who deny that any bond of law or of association for purposes of common good exists among citizens. This opinion subverts all union in a state. There are those who deny that any such bond exists between themselves and strangers, and this opinion destroys the community of the Human Race."

Bacon declared that there was in man's nature "a secret love of others, which if not contracted, would expand and embrace all men.” These maxims proceed on the principle of the unity of the race and of course of a supreme law regulating the conduct of men and nations upon the basis of absolute justice and equality. Locke adopted them when he inculcated that while there is a "law of popular opinion or reputation," which in society is "the measure of virtue and vice," and while there is a civil law which in the state is "the measure of crime and innocence," there is also a divine law which extends over "all society and all states, and which is the only touchstone of moral rectitude.'

Guizot closed his recital of the decline of Roman civilization, with these equally true and momentous reflections: "Had not the Christian church existed at this time the whole world must have fallen a prey to mere brute force. The Christian church alone possessed a moral power. It maintained and promulgated the idea of a precept, of a law superior to all human authority. It proclaimed that great truth, which forms the only foundation of our hope for humanity, that there exists a law above all human laws, which by whatever name it may be called, whether reason, the law of God, or what not, is at all times and in all places the same, under different names."

It ought not to excite any surprise when I aver that this philosophy worked out the American Revolution. "Can anything," said