her
only by the great highways of the ocean, have placed in our hands all
the advantages that we need.... Favored by vicinity, by soil and
climate on our own territory, with a people inferior to none in
enterprise and vigor, without any serious rivals anywhere, all this
Pacific coast is ours or is our tributary.... We hold as ours the great
ocean that so lately rolled in solitary grandeur from the equator to
the pole. In the changes certain to be effected in the currents of
finance, of exchange, and of trade, by the telegraph and the railroads,
bringing the financial centers of Europe and of the United States by
way of San Francisco within a few weeks of the ports of China and of
the East, San Francisco must become at no distant day the banker, the
factor, and the carrier of the trade of eastern Asia and the Pacific,
to an extent to which it is difficult to assign limits." Are the people
now lacking in the enterprise and vigor which Mr. Casserly claimed for
them? Have the limits he scorned been since assigned, and do the
Californians of to-day assent to the restriction?

Take yet another name, treasured, I know, on the roll of California's
most worthy servants, another Democrat. Governor Haight, only a third
of a century ago, said: "I see in the near future a vast commerce
springing up between the Chinese Empire and the nations of the West; an
interchange of products and manufactures mutually beneficial; the
watchword of progress and the precepts of a pure religion uttered to
the ears of a third of the human race." And addressing some
representatives of that vast region, he added, with a burst of fine
confidence in the supremacy of San Francisco's position: "As Chief
Magistrate of this Western State of the Nation, I welcome you to the
territory of the Republic,... in no selfish or narrow spirit, either of
personal advantage or seeking exclusive privileges for our own over the
other nations; and so, in the name of commerce, of civilization, of
progress, of humanity, and of religion, on behalf not merely of
California or America, but of Europe and of mankind, I bid you and your
associates welcome and God-speed."

Perhaps this may be thought merely an exuberant hospitality. Let me
quote, then, from the same man, speaking again as the Governor of the
State, at the Capitol of the State, in the most careful oration of his
life: "What shall be said of the future of California? Lift your eyes
and expand your conceptions to ta