mensity, a world
yourselves. Then you were a small people of three millions and a half;
now you are a mighty nation of twenty-four millions. Thus you have fully
entered into the second stadium of national life, in which a nation
lives at length not for itself separately, but as a member of the great
family of human nations; having a right to whatever is due from that
family _towards_ every one of its full-grown members, but also
engaged to every duty which that great family may claim _from_
every one of its full-grown members.

A nation may, either from comparative weakness, or by choice and policy,
as Japan and China, or by both these motives, as Paraguay under Dr.
Francia,--be induced to live a life secluded from the world, indifferent
to the destinies of mankind, in which it cannot or will not have any
share. But then it must be willing to be also excluded from the benefits
of progress, civilization and national intercourse, while disavowing all
care about all other nations in the world. No citizen of the United
States has, or ever will have, the wish to see this country degraded to
the rotting vegetation of a Paraguay, or the mummy existence of a Japan
and China. The feeling of self-dignity, and the expansiveness of that
enterprizing spirit which is congenial to freemen, would revolt against
the very idea of such a degrading national captivity. But if there were
even a will to live such a mummy life, there is no possibility to do so.
The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it
is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of
civilization, and all its moral and material interests, would lead on
your people not only to maintain, but necessarily more and more to
develop your foreign intercourse. Then, being in so many respects linked
to mankind at large, you cannot have the will, nor yet the power, to
remain indifferent to the outward world. And if you cannot remain
indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in
which the fate and condition of man is weighed. You are a power on
earth. You must be a power on earth, and must therefore accept all the
consequences of this position. You cannot allow that any power in the
world should dispose of the fate of that great family of mankind, of
which you are so pre-eminent a member: else you would resign your proud
place and your still prouder future, and be a power on earth no more.

I hope I have sufficiently shown