354 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
we feel no fear for their adequacy in the future. Released now 
from the tasks and burdens of the formative period, these principles 
and methods can be directed with undivided force to the every-day 
conduct of government, to the staple and steady virtues of adminis¬ 
tration. The feebleness of crowding the statute-books with unex¬ 
ecuted laws; the danger of power outgrowing or evading responsi¬ 
bility; the rashness and fickleness of temporary expedients; the 
constant tendency by which parties decline into factions and end 
in conspiracies; ail these mischiefs beset all governments and are 
part of the life of each generation. To deal with these evils — the 
tasks and burdens of the immediate future — the nation needs no 
other resources than the principles and the examples of our past 
history supply. These principles, these examples of our fathers, 
are the strength and the safety of our state to-day; Morihiis 
antiquis^ stat res Eomana^ virisque.'’'^ 
Unity, liberty, power, prosperity — these are our possessions to¬ 
day. Our territory is safe against foreign dangers; its complete¬ 
ness dissuades from further ambitions to extend it, and its rounded 
symmetry discourages all attempts to dismember it. No division 
into greatly unequal parts would be tolerable to either. No imag¬ 
inable union of interests or passions, large enough to include one- 
half the country, but must embrace much more. The madness of 
partition into numerous and feeble fragments could proceed only 
from the hopeless degradation of the people, and would form but an 
incident in general ruin. 
The spirit of the nation is at the highest — its triumph over the 
inborn, inbred perils of the constitution has chased away all fears, 
justified all hopes, and with universal joy we greet this day. We 
have not proved unworthy of a great ancestry; we have had the 
virtue to uphold what they so wisely, so firmly established. With 
these proud possessions of the past, with powers matured, with 
principles settled, with habits formed, the nation passes as it were 
from preparatory growth to responsible development of character, 
and the steady performance of duty. What labors await it, w^hat 
trials shall attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory 
for itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century, we 
may not assiine to foretell. “One generation passeth away, and 
another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever,” and we 
reverently hope that these our constituted liberties shall be main- 
