the young republic to acquire a constitutional life, and, therefore, certain great interests had, unfortunately, to be postponed or compromised for a season, to the end that her untried political system might become thoroughly fixed in the grooves of constitutional order and authority, so that in the appropriate periods of her historical development, all the great interests of human freedom might be safely organized and protected under the majesty of the law.

But if we must not under-estimate, neither must we over-estimate the constitution. It is not infallible. It is not something stationary. It moves with the nation. It is the servant of the nation. It is always to be adapted to the wants of the nation. The constitution is now passing through its ordeal. We believe that it will come out triumphant. We believe that before a great while it will be better adapted to the wants of a free government than it was upon the day of its adoption. The freedom of all the people; the citizenship of all the people; the equality of citizens and the equality of States-these are to be the grand principles of the constitution of the re-constructed Union.) When that happy day dawns upon us, we shall hear more about the blessings of Liberty and the advantages of the Union than we have ever heard before. The State first-the Union second-the Union under the Constitution will be regarded as the dead language of the past-the false teaching of discomfited treason. Such phrases will find no place in the new language

mon le witho gressio Gent

allow of the presen of the abled votion upon a well Counti of the indep Тор on the durin bright and to diere

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of the Nation-but we shall hear everywhere, leaping joyfully from the lips of the whole people, that loyal and scornful reply of Henry Clay to Jefferson Davis, in 1850, "I owe a paramount allegiance to my whole country-I owe a subordinate fidelity to my own State."

I have spoken to you of the oppression of our fathers as the cause of the revolution, but there was something greater than that which brought it about, and controlled its mighty impulses. Even if Mr. Burke's proposition "to admit the Americans to an equal interest in the British constitution, and place them at once on the footing of other Englishmen," had been adopted, a separation between the colonies and England would have taken place at no very distant day. There was a historical necessity for such a government as the government of the United States. The human race was about to move forward in its progressive march, and a different sphere of action was needed-a free land which had been kept clean from the permanent impressions of any of the old forms of government. And, therefore, here in new America, where there were no olden dynasties, no long lines of royalty and aristocracy, no established system of politics, and very little, if any, of the belief in the "divine right of kings;" here, among a people who seemed to have more of the spirit of liberty in their hearts than any other people on the face of the earth, whose life was full of great ideas struggling for deliverance, whose colonial education had made them a brave, hardy,

practical, self-reliant people; whose geographical position was eminently adapted to develop their energies, moral and intellectual-in this land and among these people was, in the order of providential history, to be founded a government suited to the wants of progressive humanity, representative in its nature and in its administration; not only representing its own citizens, but representing the world. The real meaning-the philosophical meaning-of our national motto, "one from many," is not merely one State from many States, but one nature from many natures, one people from many people, one great nation from all the nations of the earth.

"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs." History is the revelation of that purpose. That which is now is the product of that which was. The great eras of the past were the nurseries of the eras of the present. The civilization of the past culminates in the civilization of the present. The heroism of other days renews its glory in the heroism of to-day. The church of this century wears upon her head the crown her blessed martyrs died for long years ago. This age was foreshadowed in every former struggle for civil and religious freedom, America is the result of previous history-the child of the ages. You cannot crush her, She is in the line of progress. You cannot chain the wheels of her chariot. She is one of the great figures that mark the historical development of the race. In one sense, she is the last in its line of march,