p alive the spirit of
patriotism--that powerful genius, which, like the angels of Scripture,
guards with flaming sword the Paradise of national liberty and
independence. Happy the land where the history of the past is the
history of the people, and not a mere flattery of kings; and
doubly happy the land where the rewards of the past are brightened by
present glory, present happiness; and where the noble deeds of the dead,
instead of being a mournful monument of vanished greatness which saddens
the heart, though it ennobles the mind, are a lasting source of national
welfare to the age and to posterity. But where, as in this your happy
land, national history is the elementary basis of education--where the
very schoolboy is better acquainted with the history of his country than
in monarchies almost the professors are--in such a country it would be
indeed but a ridiculous parading of vanity for a stranger to dwell upon
facts which every child is better acquainted with than he can be. Allow
me therefore, gentlemen, rather briefly to expound what is the practical
philosophy of that great victory which you are assembled to
celebrate--what is the moral of the strain as it presents itself to the
inquirer's mind.

As a man has to pass through several periods of age, each of them marked
with its own peculiarities, before he comes to a settled position in
life, even so a nation. A nation has first to be born, then to grow;
then it has to prove its passive vitality by undergoing a trial of life.
Afterwards it has to prove its active force to rise within its own
immediate horizon. At last, it must take its proper seat amongst the
nations of the world as a power on earth. Every one of these periods of
national life must be gone through. There is no help for it. It is a
necessary process of life. And every one of these life-periods has its
own natural condition, which must be accepted as a necessity, even if we
should not be pleased with it.

Gentlemen, having passed through the ordeal of an earnest life, with the
prospect of yet having to steer through stormy gales, it is natural
that, while I grasp my helm, I gaze at History, as my compass. And there
is no history more instructive than yours, because you have concentrated
within the narrow scope of a few years that natural process of national
life, which elsewhere was achieved only through centuries. It would be a
mistake, and a mistake not without danger, to believe that your natio