364 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



where the first furrow was ploughed in the virgin soil by the 

 hands of our very fathers ; nay, of an empire, broader than 

 Macedonian king or Roman general ever ruled, rising out of 

 the earth as if at the stamp of our feet. 



We see that it is not an empire only, but a people, standing 

 before us, colossal, glorious, sublime in its supernal majesty, 

 with the aureola of divinity flashing from its brow. For that 

 people has the highest of the patents of nobility to show for 

 itself, as the Spaniard phrases it, namely, its works ; it has 

 taken its knightly spurs on the field ; it has gained its blazon 

 of arms in the council chamber ; it is the child of its own 

 achievements. And in thus learning to become great, it has 

 learned the harder lesson to be great ; for whilst other nations 

 are struggling in vain to establish free institutions, wildly toss- 

 ing their limbs in the throes and convulsions of mingled hope 

 and fear, only to sink down again into the death-like torpor of 

 despair, we, on the contrary, led forward by those great men 

 among us, whose solid minds are alike unshaken, whether by 

 the " vultus instantis tyranni " or by the " civium ardor prava 

 jubentium," have, amidst difliculties unexampled, held on our 

 course in conscious strength, proudly dashing behind us the 

 troubled waters of discontent and disunion. 



Nevertheless, it may be right for us to inquire, how much of 

 all these grand results, of this rapid growth in power, of this 

 happy combination of liberty with order, and of the organic 

 perfection of our political system, is due to men, their race, 

 character, spirit, institutions, and how much to other causes 

 above or beyond all human influences, and what those causes 

 are. 



These United States are, as a tvhole, and always have been, 

 chiefly dependent for their wealth and power on the natural 

 productions of the earth. It is the spontaneous products of our 

 forests, our mines, and our seas, and the cultivated products of 

 our soil, which have made, and continue to make, us what we 

 are. Manufacture can but modify these, commerce only dis- 

 tribute or accumulate them, and exchange them for others, to 

 gratify taste or promote convenience. Land is the footstool of 

 our power J land is the throne of our empire. 



