Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/297

Rh increasing and expenses are being reduced. The Pacific railroad is a proximate reality. Men who can lift their eyes above the little precincts of a day, will see in these things the promise of our growth and greatness as a people. I know what syren song self-love sings for slavery; how pleasant it seems in prospect to have a slave to till our ground, to wait upon us while we wake, and fan us when we sleep. But are these the ideas to possess men whose business it is to lay the foundation of a State? History, philosophy, and posterity plead with us not to be wholly absorbed in the present, but to learn from the past and look to the future, and if we hear and obey this appeal, the lapse of twenty-five or fifty years, which is as nothing in the life of a State, will find Oregon teeming with a people, intelligent, prosperous and happy, and every man a freeman.