Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/309




 * —I shall ask your attention, this evening, to some few thoughts on the present condition of the United States in respect to slavery. After all that has been said by wise, powerful, and eloquent men in this city, this week, perhaps I shall have scarce anything to present that is new.

As you look on the general aspect of America to-day, its main features are not less than sublime, while they are likewise beautiful exceedingly. The full breadth of the continent is ours, from sea to sea, from the great lakes to the great gulf. There are three million square miles, with every variety of climate, and soil, and mineral; great rivers, a static force, inclined planes for travel reaching from New Orleans to the Falls of St Anthony, from the mouth of the St Lawrence to Chicago; smaller rivers, a dynamic force, turning the many thousand mills of the industrious North. There is a coast most richly indented, to aid the spread of civilization. The United States has more than twelve thousand miles of shore Hue on the continent; more than nine thousand on its islands; more than twenty-four thousand miles of river navigation. Here is the material groundwork for a great state—not an empire, but a commonwealth. The world has not such another.