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

John Adams, in replying to one who had apologized for the stamp act," Can anything not abominable have provoked you to commence, an enemy to human nature?"

Alexander Hamilton, though less necessary to the Revolution than John Adams, was even more necessary to the reconstruction of society. He directed against the same odious stamp act the authority of British law, as he found it written down by Blackstone: "The law of nature being coeval with God himself is of course superior to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all time. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Then, as if despising to stand on any mere human authority, however high, the framer of the American constitution proceeded: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

How justly Knox conceived the true character of the chief personage of the Revolution, even at its very beginning: "The great and good Washington, a name which shall shine with distinguished lustre in the annals of history, a name dear to the friends of the liberties of mankind."

La Fayette closed his review of the Revolution when returning to France with this glowing apostrophe: "May this great temple which we have just erected to liberty always be an instruction to oppressors, an example to the oppressed, a refuge for the rights of the human race, and an object of delight to the names of its founders."

"Happy," said Washington when announcing the treaty of peace to the army, "thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who shall have contributed anything, who shall have performed even the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom and empire on the broad basis of independency, who shall have assisted in protecting the rights of human nature and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions."

You remember well that the Revolutionary Congress in the Declaration of Independence placed the momentous controversy between the colonies of Great Britain on the absolute and inherent equality

of all men. It is not however so well understood that that body closed its existence, on the adoption of the federal constitution, with this solemn injunction, addressed to the people of the United States: "Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature."

No one will contend that our fathers, after effecting the Revolution and the independence of their country by proclaiming this system of beneficent political philosophy, established an entirely different one in the constitution assigned to its government. This philosophy, then, is the basis of the American constitution.

It is moreover a true philosophy, deduced from the nature of man and the character of the Creator. If there were no supreme law, then the world would be a scene of universal anarchy, resulting from the eternal conflict of peculiar institutions and antagonistic laws. There being such a universal law, if any human constitutions and laws differing from it could have any authority, then that universal law could not be supreme. That supreme law is necessarily based on the equality of nations, of races, and of men. It is a simple, self-evident basis. One nation, race, or individual, may not oppress or injure another, because the safety and welfare of each is essential to the common safety and welfare of all. If all are not equal and free, then who is entitled to be free, and what evidence of his superiority can he bring from nature or revelation? All men necessarily have a common interest in the promulgation and maintenance of these principles, because it is equally in the nature of men to be content with the enjoyment of their just rights, and to be discontented under the privation of them. Just so far as these principles practically prevail, the stringency of government is safely relaxed, and peace and harmony obtained. But men cannot maintain these principles, or even comprehend them, without a very considerable advance in knowledge and virtue. The law of nations, designed to preserve peace among mankind, was unknown to the ancients. It has been perfected in our own times by means of the more general dissemination of knowledge and practice of the virtues inculcated by Christianity. To disseminate knowledge and to increase virtue therefore among men, is to establish and maintain the principles on which the recovery and preservation of their inherent natural rights