Page:Back to the Republic.djvu/50

 to the founding of this republic no government had been devised which gave to its people religious freedom, civil liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, security of individual rights, popular education or universal suffrage. During the first hundred years of the existence of this standard form of government all these privileges were secured. In that first century of our history we developed a larger galaxy of great statesmen (because they were working and thinking along standard lines) than has been developed by all other governments in the history of mankind. We harmonized into a splendid citizenship people of many nationalities coming to our shores with varying ambitions and ideals. We stood the strain of the great Civil War and came out of it stronger and better. We made material and commercial progress that has had no parallel in history, and while making that matchless record we established for the United States of America the leading place among the nations of the world. All these evidences of the adaptability of the republic successfully to meet unlooked-for emergencies, to harmonize the incoherent elements from other lands, to establish the blessings of liberty, of education and of individual rights, and to successfully solve the problems which had