hourly conveise together ; our territoiy, from a comparatively 

 narrow belt along the Atlantic, augmented till its western 

 shore bounded the great quiet sea ; and yet more compact, of 

 more easy access and intercommunication than the old thirteen 

 of the revolution ; our political privileges extended till they 

 had almost outrun the conception of the socialist ; and this 

 under a government controlled and administered silently — 

 noiselessly — as the great system of the universe. We trav- 

 ersed the country hundreds and thousands of miles in our 

 railway cars, and equal thousands upon our steamboats, or by 

 whatever other agency of locomotion we selected, and the 

 sight of a bayonet or a soldier was so rare that we stopped 

 and gazed upon the spectacle and wondered the object of its 

 existence. The simple star upon the breast of a hundred or 

 two of otherwise undistinguished citizens in our large cities, 

 gave ample assurance of safety and protection by night and 

 by day, to every individual. With all this there was no bur- 

 den of tayation ; the very term "rates" almost, or quite 

 obsolete ; our system of administration of public affairs differ- 

 ing widely from what the world had ever before seen ; with a 

 national government designed to have and having simply suf- 

 ficient jurisdiction "to establish justice, insure domestic tran- 

 quility, provide for the common defence, promote the general 

 welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 

 our posterity ; " with State governments, each adapted to its 

 peculiar locality and its peculiar institutions, regulating the 

 police and protecting the citizen, in some, especially in our 

 own, developing all the resources, mental, moral and physi- 

 cal, but generally so administering affairs through the agency 

 of those primal and most pertect democracies (the town m^eet- 

 ings of Massachusetts) that wisdom and economy were com- 

 bined, and the citizen saw that every dollar, which he was 

 called upon to devote to the public service, was but an in- 

 vestment made by him, the income of which, he personally 

 realized in the education of the children and in the protection, 

 security and comfort of the people. There was no idea of 



