impossible to ruin it. In what other age save Cromwell's, or in what other city in the world, would regiments march through, chanting godly battle hymns?-how often before, have Rulers said, and meant, intelligently, that "their only wish was to find and to do the will of God?"

Lincoln will stand grandly in history, though lately the butt of every charlatan. He made no mistake in policy, and it is by policy that the American battle was won. The old European imposture, that homely common sense and honesty cannot govern, has nohow been so well refuted as by Lincoln's government. But worse was said of Washington than of Lincoln. A long since extinct print the "Aurora," then the "leading Journal," declared" If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched "by Washington. An example to future ages, that "the mask of patriotism may conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people."

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Had Lincoln not been, comparatively speaking, the complete man he was-had he been a mere enthusiast, his enemies had forgiven him.

It was Lincoln who committed the North against Slavery. It is Lincoln, working in grand simplicity with the common sense of the people, who has swung the nation round the critical point of its whole history, bringing it from "non-extension in 1860, to "abolition" in 1863, and, step by step, making it safe and sure that the South could not return and bring Slavery with it. It is Lincoln who

و,

kept the Border Slave States for Union, and prepared them and the Union to combine against

Slavery. It is Lincoln who went far enough and not too far ahead of public sentiment, who educated the mind of the North to abolition, till the Union and Freedom were one word.

Nevertheless, with John Brown at Harper's Ferry was, perhaps, more than with any other man, the turning point in the New World's history.

As to England, the North affirmed, and the South denied, the two main results of three hundred years of the blood, and sacrifices, and efforts, of the Anglo-Saxon race,—the principles and practice of freedom and of authority, of national and individual right, reconciled, and confirmed.

England has got through many struggles, with varying fortunes, and the mighty momentum of her Empire in the greatness of its way, has carried her through all the mistakes of her Statesmen. There was lately put to her the greatest question ever put to a country as a test of its use on Earth, or its value before Heaven. England should thank God for her democracy, for her oligarchy would fain have answered this great question the wrong way. Had she lifted a little finger against all her past, against her own sons and kindred, against the genius of authority, freedom, and national integrity and honour; against the great nation that has won the most glorious war of any age, that commands the largest territory, the greatest resources, the freest institutions, the most numerous armies and fleets, and soon the widest trade, and among living nations the most numerous population; that

has had more military experience than all existing generals and troops elsewhere put together, that is three thousand miles from England's base of operations, and at the same time next door to Canada, and whose institutions are destined to change by their example the entire aspect of the world-had England moved against this nation, and aided that other, to "blow the billowy verge of everlasting night” across the precincts of civilisation—she had created the Nemesis which would have dismembered her empire, clouded all her past glories, and extinguished her future, and which would have so earned of the age, and of all ages,

“A name which every wind to heaven would bear,
Which men to speak, and angels joy to hear."

But the Democracy of England understood too well their interests in the great American popular "experiment," to allow of any further un-English experimentalising against it.

The solemn hour of America's manhood has struck and they keep the jubilee well. But had not America been equal to this work, had she been faithless to her MIGHTY UNKNOWN FUTURE, whose foundations are deep in democracy, whose heights are dim in the unfulfilled, whose principles are the life of nations-had she not been the martyr and saviour nation she has been, then Humanity must have turned once more towards the East, Democracy would have waited eighteen hundred years in vain

for a precedent, and philosophy must have looked to other continents and to other civilisations.

America is now the grandest combination of Power, Stability, Unity, Freedom, and Happiness, the world has seen.

As a Nation it has, complete and sound, its material bases, its individuality, and its organic functions; and not only this, they are completer and sounder than has hitherto been thought possible. And more than that; they are based on principles which have some sort of finality in politics, for they reconcile an intense and concentrated executive, a legislature chosen by the whole national manhood, a balance of power between the sovereign parts and the sovereign whole, with Equality the only Freedom as between Individuals, and the only guarantee of Freedom as regards the State.

It has illustrated the great principle that complexity of relationships and inter-action whilst the result of Freedom, are not contrary to, but essential to, a complete national Unity, and that Equality of Individual right is the only thing that can fulfil the National Sovereignty and power.

As a Democracy it is based on that threefold freedom whose foundations can never be shaken, of School, Church, and Assembly.

As a Federation it has stood-and strengthened by it-the strongest test yet applied to Federations.

It seems almost as though there must be invented a new disease in body politics before the life of the American nation can be successfully assailed. The last assault delivered against it has ended, or

is ending, in a propagandism of prosperity and freedom, that can have no limits save in the wants and emptiness of the nations. And both sections of America will have conquered; the North in the triumph of its principles, the South in appropriating their power.

Thus, this nation, made of the principle of Equality, unmakes for ever the Oligarchy of the West, and therewith all other oligarchies. Slavery, oligarchy, and other sectional, anti-national interests will be speedily assimilated or destroyed by it. Nations everywhere, like this Royal AngloAmerican, will become royal, and manhood shall join hands around the earth.

From the moment of the victory of that system, the principle of continued life and of political finality went visibly out of all others. The Democracy of the West has prevailed to open the gates of the Future for all Peoples.

Before the first nation had been constituted upon a basis of Equality, the foundations of Society had not settled, and no superstructure could be safe,the first principles of Association were not comprehended, and no system could endure. Till that foundation is laid and those principles acknowledged, in at least the political competency of the majority, Construction and Destruction must succeed each other interminably, and organic changes will shake the fabric of every advancing State: after that, the only questions will be those of administration, and of foreign policy. The development and organisation of the whole as to qualities,