AMERICA'S TRUE GREATNESS. At present we behold only the rising of our sun of empire,only the fair seeds and beginnings of a great nation. Whether that glowing orb shall attain to a meridian height, or fall suddenly from its glorious sphere; whether those prolific seeds shall mature into autumnal ripeness, or shall perish, yielding no harvest, depends on God's will and providence. But God's will and providence operate not by casualty or caprice, but by fixed and revealed laws. If we would secure the greatness set before us, we must find the way which those laws indicate, and keep within it. That way is new and all untried. We departed early -we departed at the beginning-from the beaten track of national ambition. Our lot was cast in an age of revolution,— a revolution which was to bring all mankind from a state of servitude to the exercise of self-government,-from under the tyranny of physical force to the gentle sway of opinion,-from under subjection to matter to dominion over nature. It was ours to lead the way,—to take up the cross of republicanism and bear it before the nations, to fight its earliest battles, to enjoy its earliest triumphs, to illustrate its purifying and elevating virtues, and by our courage and resolution, our moderation and our magnanimity, to cheer and sustain its future followers through the baptism of blood and the martyrdom of fire. A mission so noble and benevolent demands a generous and self-denying enthusiasm. Our greatness is to be won by beneficence without ambition. We are in danger of losing that holy zeal. We are surrounded by temptations. Our dwellings become palaces, and our villages are transformed, as if by magic, into great cities. Fugitives from famine, and oppression, and the sword, crowd our shores, and proclaim to us that we alone are free, and great, and happy. Our empire enlarges. The continent and its islands seem ready to fall within our grasp, and more than even fabulous wealth opens under our feet. No public virtue can withstand, none ever encountered, such seductions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified, under circumstances so new and peculiar. Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task so arduous as this? Shall we invoke the press and the pulpit? They only reflect the actual condition of the public morals, and cannot change them. Shall we resort to the executive authority? The time has passed when it could compose and modify the political elements around it. Shall we go to the Senate? Conspiracies, seditions, and corruptions in all free countries have begun there. Where, then, shall we go to find an agency that can uphold and renovate declining public virtue? Where should we go but there, where all republican virtue begins and must end? where the Promethean fire is ever to be rekindled until it shall finally expire? where motives are formed and passions disciplined? To the domestic fireside and humbler school, where the American citizen is trained. Instruct him there, that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country Lacedæmonian heroism, but that more than Spartan valor and more than Roman magnificence is required of her. Go, then, ye laborers in a noble cause; gather the young Catholic and the young Protestant alike into the nursery of freedom, and teach them there, that, although religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the offering of a "broken spirit” which God will not despise, yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her sons, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to humanity. WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD AMERICA'S INTRINSIC STRENGTH. THE enemies of popular right and power have been pointing to the dreadful proof which is afforded in America, that an ex tended suffrage is a thing to be shunned, as the most calamitous thing possible to a country. I will not refer to the speeches that have dealt with this question in this manner, or to the newspapers which have so treated it. I believe now, that a great many people in this country are beginning to see that those who have been misleading them, for the last two or three years, have been profoundly dishonest or profoundly ignorant. If I am to give my opinion upon it, I should say, that which has taken place in America within the last three years, affords the most triumphant answer to charges of this kind. Let us see the government of the United States. They have a suffrage which is almost what here would be called a manhood suffrage. There are frequent elections, vote by ballot, and ten thousand, twenty thousand, and one hundred thousand persons vote at an election. Will anybody deny that the government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world, at this hour? And for this simple reason because it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people. Look at its power! I am not now discussing why it is, or the cause which is developing this power; but power is the thing which men regard, in these old countries, and which they ascribe mainly to European institutions; but look at the power which the United States have developed! They have brought more men into the field, they have built more ships for their navy, they have shown greater resources, than any nation in Europe at this moment is capable of. Look at the order which has prevailed at their elections, at which, as you see by the papers, fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand, or two hundred and fifty thousand persons vote, in a given State, with less disorder than you have seen lately in three of the smallest boroughs in England. Look at their industry. Notwithstanding this terrific struggle, their agriculture, their manufactures and commerce, proceed with an uninterrupted success. They are ruled by a President, chosen, it is true, not from some worn-out royal or noble blood, but from the people, and the one whose truthfulness and spotless honor have claimed him universal praise; and now the country that has been vilified through half the organs of the press in England, during the last three years, and was pointed out, too, as an example to be shunned, by many of your statesmen,— that country, now in mortal strife, affords a haven and a home for multitudes, flying from the burdens and the neglect of the old governments of Europe; and when this mortal strife is over,—when peace is restored, when slavery is destroyed, when the Union is cemented afresh, for I would say, in the language of one of our own poets addressing his country, "The grave's not dug where traitor hands shall lay, then, Europe and England may learn that an instructed democ racy is the surest foundation of government, and that education and freedom are the only sources of true greatness and true happiness among any people. JOHN BRIGHT. (1868.) AMERICA WITHOUT A PARALLEL. In all the attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people, we stand without a parallel in the world. Abroad, we enjoy the respect and, with scarcely an exception, the friendship of every nation; at home, while our government quietly, but efficiently, performs the sole legitimate end of political institutions, in doing the greatest good to the greatest number, we present an aggregate of human prosperity surely not elsewhere to be found. How imperious, then, is the obligation imposed upon every citizen, in his own sphere of action, whether limited or extended, to exert himself in perpetuating a condition of things so singularly happy! All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us, if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess. Position and climate, and the bounteous resources that nature has scattered with so liberal a hand, even the diffused intelligence and elevated character of our people,-will avail us nothing, if we fail sacredly to uphold those political institutions that were wisely and deliberately formed with reference to every circumstance that could preserve, or might endanger, the blessings we enjoy. The thoughtful framers of our Constitution legislated for our country as they found it. Looking upon it with the eyes of statesmen and of patriots, they saw all the sources of rapid and wonderful prosperity; but they saw, also, that various habits, opinions, and institutions, peculiar to the various portions of so vast a region, were deeply fixed. Distinct Sovereignties were in actual existence, whose cordial union was essential to the welfare and happi. ness of all. Between many of them there was, at least to some extent, a real diversity of interests, liable to be exaggerated through sinister designs; they differed in size, in population, in wealth, and in actual and prospective resources and power; they varied in the character of their industry and staple productions; and in some existed domestic institutions which, unwisely disturbed, might endanger the harmony of the whole. Most carefully were all these circumstances weighed, and the foundations of the new government laid upon principles of reciprocal concession and equitable compromise. The jealousies which the smaller States might entertain of the power of the rest were allayed by a rule of representation confessedly unequal at the time, and designed forever to remain 80. A natural fear that the broad scope of general legislation might bear upon and unwisely control particular interests, was counteracted by limits strictly drawn around the action of the Federal authority; and to the people, and to the States, was left, unimpaired, their sovereign power over the innumerable subjects embraced in the internal government of a just republic, excepting such only as necessarily appertain to the concerns of the whole Confederacy, or its intercourse, as a united community, with the other nations of the world. MARTIN VAN BUREN. AMERICA IN THE FRONT RANK OF NATIONS. THIS lovely land, this glorious liberty, these benign institutions, the dear purchase of our fathers, are ours; ours to enjoy, ours to preserve, ours to transmit. Generations past, and generations to come hold us responsible for this sacred trust. Our fathers, from beh.nd, admonish us, with their anxious paternal voices; posterity calls out to us from the bosom of the future; the world turns hither its solicitous eyes,-all, all conjure us to act wisely, and faithfully, in the relation which we sustain. We can never, indeed, pay the debt which is upon us; but by virtue, by morality, by religion, by the cultivation of every good principle and every good habit, we may hope to enjoy the blessing through our day, and to leave it unimpaired to |