And State Papers 337 



ain fifteen centuries and over after the dominion of 

 Rome passed away, the Roman roads as features 

 still remain ; going through Italy, where power after 

 power has risen, and flourished, and vanished since 

 the days when the temporal dominion of the Roman 

 emperors transferred its seat from Rome to By 

 zantium going through Italy after the Lombard, 

 the Goth, the Byzantine, and all the people of the 

 Middle Ages that have ruled that country it is the 

 imperishable Roman road that reappears. 



The faculty, the art, the habit of road building 

 marks in a nation those solid, stable qualities which 

 tell for permanent greatness. Merely from the stand 

 point of historic analogy we should have a right to 

 ask that this people which has tamed a continent, 

 which has built up a country with a continent for its 

 base, which boasts itself, with truth, as the might 

 iest republic that the world has ever seen, which I 

 firmly believe will in the century now opening rise 

 to a position of headship and leadership such as no 

 other nation has ever yet attained merely from his 

 toric analogy, I say, we should have a right to de 

 mand that such a nation build good roads. Much 

 more have we the right to demand it from the prac 

 tical standpoint. The great difference between the 

 semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages and the civiliza 

 tion which succeeded it was the difference between 

 poor and good means of communication. And we to 

 whom space is less of an obstacle than ever it was 

 in the history of any other nation, we who have 

 spanned a continent, who have thrust our border 



