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Show 56 stand many more. It is not, as many think, a creature of a day. Its foundations were laid at the first settlement of these States, and their whole history was silently preparbg them to become one great people. There is not a community Jll earth, which has so distinct a conviction of the blessings of national union, and of the evils of separation, as this country; and, in the present age of the world, such a conviction may avail almost or quite as much as the traditional prejudices and habits of other nations. Then our Union does not rest only on the clear perception of the good it confers. It rests on sentiment as well as interest, and on a higher sentiment than binds any other people. We are charged, I know, with being given to boasting ; but this reproach must not deter me from speaking of the deep foundation of our Union in the claims of our country on our love and reverence. No other peo· pie can look back to such founders as we. No other people has done as much in an equal time for civilization and freedom. Two hundred years have hardly passed over us, and we have redeemed from savage wildness a realm, corn· pared with which European kingdoms are dwarfed into provinces ; and, through every period of our history, we have been pressing forwards to an equality of rights and a freedom of institutions, nowhere else known in past or present times. The deliberate construction of a civil polity, in which the idea of liberty is realized to a degree not dreamed of in other countries, is one of the grandest achievements of history. Other governments, the creatures of chance, and obstructed by abuses of barbarous times, bear no such testimony to the energy and elevation of the public mind. Through this clear, bright, practical developement of the principle of liberty, these United States, an infant country, growing up in a distant wilderness, have moved and quickened the civilized world. This country has been called by Providence to a twofold work, to spread 57 civilization over a new continent, and to give a new impulse to the cause of human rights and freedom. A higher destiny has been granted to no people ; and, with all our imperfections, (exceedingly great I acknowledge,) we have accomplished our task with a force of thought and will unsm·passed in human history. Add to this, that we have produced what no other country can boast of, a spotless revolutionary leader, a chief, who, in a season of storm and civil strife, amidst unbounded popularity, amidst the temptations of severe hardship and of brilliant success, never, in a single instance, grasped at power, forgot his duty to his country, or wavered in his loyalty to freedom. In one form of greatness, we feel ourselves unrivalled. The annals of no people furnish a patriot and friend of liberty, so pure, so disinterested as Washington. That a people having such a history, should be bound by sentiment to the national Union, is a necessary result of the laws of human nature ; and accordingly, the people, as far as I know them, are, on this point, of one heart and one mind. But, besides this generous sentiment, we have character .. istic feelings, as a people, which bind us together. One of our national passions is pride in a vast extent of territory. From the circumstance of our history and location, we are accustomed to think and talk of immense regions, and to scour remote tracts of sea and land ; and we should experience a sense of confinement in the boundaries which satisfy other states. An American has a passion for belonging to a great country. A witty foreigner observed of the city of JV ashington, that it had one merit if no other ; it was a city of " magnificent distances." For this kind of magnificence our people have a decided taste. We look with something like scorn on the kingdoms of the old world ; and our mother country seems to us but a speck on the ocean. We travel a distance equal to the whole length of Great Britain in two days or less, and feel |