Page:The History of Liberty.djvu/30

 fury and wrath, sink into silence and repose at your bidding; or you might as well command the flashing lightening to slumber in the dark bosom of the thunder cloud as it rolls in darkning grandeur along the skies and shrouds in its sable robes the glories of the summer landscape, as arrest now the progress of liberty. She is going forth conquering and to conquer, nor will she halt until tyranny is driven from its last abode on earth. No pathless wild, no impenetrable forest, no mountain barrier ribbed with eternal ice and hoary with everlasting snows can impede her progress. At her approach every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain be brought low—; the crooked places shall be made straight, the rough places plain; and under her benign influences the wilderness shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

What can repress the ardor, the energy in the American mind? a mind that is the peculiar and legitimate foundation of Liberty—and what can, or should check the spirit of enterprise the necessary offspring of that mind? Would one continent think you, could one continent, or should one continent suffice to do this? nay verily. The world is the patrimony of Liberty by divine right, and she will not rest until it becomes hers by right of occupancy. Call not the progress of Liberty aggressive encroachments: call not these events now in progress, and those in embryo the lawless effusions of licentiousness and rapine. It is the finger of God and his spirit that inspires and guides these things, which to the enemies of Liberty are so offensive and alarming. The same spirit and finger that inspired and guided Columbus across the trackless ocean: the same spirit and finger that directed the pilgrims to the wintry and desert rock of Plymouth: the same spirit and finger that led our fathers through the revolution: and the same spirit and finger that have converted the war paths and hunting grounds of the wild Indian into the fair fields and smiling cities, towns and villages of the great and glorious west. And think you that the spirit—the energies and enterprise of Liberty now in her prime, and vigor of hope are to be arrested and confined? And it will not do to try her, and the progress she is making, with events transpiring under her influence and power, by the maxims and principles of antiquated policies and theories founded upon and sustained by arbitrary power and despotic sway: no verily; as well might the Jew measure the spirit and genius of Christianity by the narrow maxims and principles of his obsolete dispensation. As christianity advanced and established herself in the world, she furnished her own