Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/219

 REED

the wages, the raw material, and within ourselves the great market which insures to us the most improved machinery. Our constant power to increase our wages insures us also continuous progress. If you wish us to follow the example of England, I say yes, with all my heart, but her real example and nothing less. Let us keep pro- tection, as she did, until no rival dares to invade our territory, and then we may take our chances for a future which by that time will not be unknown.

"We know, my friends, that before this tri- bunal we all of us plead in vain. Why we fail, let those answer who read the touching words of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural and re- member that he pleaded •with these same men and their predecessors. Where he failed we can not hope to succeed. But tho we fail here to-day, like our great leader of other days in the larger field before the mightier tribunal which will finally and for ever decide this question, we shall be more than conquerors; for this great nation, shaking off, as it has once before, the influence of a lower civilization, will go on to fulfil its high destiny, until over the South, as well as over the North, shall be spread the full measures of that amazing prosperity which is the wonder of the world.

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