Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/94

 At the end of a century we can see the work as our fathers could not; we can see that then the final movement began of a process long and unconsciously preparing, which was to intrust liberty to new forms and institutions that seemed full of happy promise for mankind. And now for nearly a century what was formerly called the experiment of a representative republic of imperial extent and power has been tried. Has it fulfilled the hopes of its founders and the just expectations of mankind? I have already glanced at its early and fortunate conditions, and we know how vast and splendid were its early growth and development. Our material statistics soon dazzled the world. Europe no longer sneered but gazed in wonder, waiting and watching. Our population doubled every fifteen years, and our wealth every ten years. Every little stream among the hills turned a mill; and the great inland seas, bound by the genius of Clinton to the ocean, became the highway of boundless commerce, the path of unprecedented empire. Our farms were the granary of other lands. Our cotton fields made England rich. Still we chased the whale in the Pacific Ocean and took fish in the tumbling seas of Labrador. We hung our friendly lights along thousands of miles of coast to tempt the trade of every clime; and wherever, on the dim rim of the globe there was a harbor, it was white with American sails. Meanwhile at home the political foreboding of federalism had died away,