relations that is greater
and firmer, and more beneficent, than can be brought about by all the
powers of armies, or all the skill of cabinets. [Applause.]

This being, then, the Republic which has grown up from the seed thus
planted, that has established our relations among ourselves over our
wide heritage, and established our relations with the rest of the world,
what is its outlook to-day? What is it in the sense of material
prosperity? Who can measure it? Who can circumscribe it? Who can,
except by the simple rule of three, which never errs, determine its
progress? As the early settlement of Plymouth is to the United States of
America, as it now is, so is the United States of America to the future
possession and control of the world as they are to be. [Cheering.] This
is to be, not by armies of invasion, nor by navies that are to carry the
thunders of our powers. It is to be by our finding our place in the
moral government of the world, and by the example, and its magnificent
results, of a free people, governed by education, occupied by industry,
and maintaining our connection with the world by commerce. Thus we are
to disarm the armies of Europe, when they dare not disarm them
themselves. [Cheers.] We present to mankind the simple, yet the
wonderful evidence that a peasant in Germany, or France, or Ireland, or
England carrying a soldier on his back, cannot compete in their own
markets with a peasant in America who has no soldier on his back, though
there be 5,000 miles distance between their farms. [Loud applause.] No
doubt wonderful commotions are to take place in the great nations of
Europe, under this example. There is to be overturning, and overturning,
for which we have no responsibility, except, that by this great
instruction, worked out by Providence on this continent, there is to be
a remodelling of society in the ancient countries of the world.
[Applause.] Now you see in the magnitude of the designs of Providence,
how, planting the Puritans where they would desire to spread themselves
abroad, and filling a continent, whence the ideas that they develop
intelligibly to the whole world, are to distribute themselves over the
world, that this is the way in which the redemption of society at home
first, and abroad afterward, is to be accomplished by the power of the
wisdom of God.

And now for the outlook in other senses than that of material
prosperity, how is it? As difficult and critical junctures have been