progress, indeed, has been immense.

In 1775 we

were thirteen colonies. We now are thirty-seven States and eleven territories. We then had a population of about two million and a half, of which Massachusetts contained more than any other State, except Virginia, and had about 360,000 persons. The United States, to-day, contains about 40 millions of people, and fifteen of the States have more than one million of inhabitants. Then, it was one of the poorest countries in the world; now, its resources are characterized by an English statistical work, as enormous." Then, its territory was a little strip of country east of the Alleghanies; now, its area contains three millions of square miles, nearly equal to the area of Europe; and we have nearly as many miles of railroad in operation, as in all of Europe. We send through the mails 750 millions of letters every year, or nineteen letters to each inhabitant, exceeded only by Great Britain, which sends 979 millions a year, or thirty letters to each inhabitant. Our mercantile marine, though only half that of Great Britain, is larger than that of any other nation. We imported, in 1874, goods to the value of 567 millions of dollars, and exported goods to the value of 586 millions of dollars. In the same year we exported 71 millions of bushels of wheat, of which 60 millions of bushels went to Great Britain. But this 71 millions exported was less than one-fourth part of the amount raised in the

country. According to the census tables of 1870, the annual product of the total manufacturing industries of the United States amounted to more than four thousand millions of dollars.*

Such statistics as these may give a general idea of the vast progress of this nation during the last hundred years. The invention of the steam-engine, steamboat, locomotive-engine and railroad,, and the electric telegraph, have made it possible to colonize the great West, and to keep this vast area of territory united under one government. But the main superiority of this country over Europe is that it offers such comfort and advantages to the poor. This is shown by the immense immigration of the humbler classes to our shores. By the census of 1870, there were living in the United States, more than five and a half millions of persons born in foreign countries; of whom more than a million and a half came from Germany, nearly two millions from Ireland, and half a million from England.

The majority of this five and a half millions of people were in humble circumstances. And what an attraction must not this country have exerted, to cause such numbers to give up the ties of home, to break through the walls of habit which surround us all and keep us in our places, to collect the sums necessary to pay the expenses

* United States census for 1870. Almanach de Gotha, etc.

of the journey over land and ocean! The cost of this emigration, at only $100 each, would amount to $550,000,000.

We do not mean to attribute all this prosperity and progress to Republican institutions. It is no doubt also due to the abundance, cheapness, and fertility of the soil, the demand for labor, the energy and intelligence of the race by which it was first colonized, and the universal diffusion of education and religious convictions, which have helped to develop the forces of the American people. But consider what a difference there would have been, if, instead of our free institutions, and our federal Republic, this continent had been occupied, as Europe is, by twenty different empires and monarchies; each having its standing army, its custom-houses along the frontier, its costly court, its soil owned by a few rich noblemen; its restrictions on industry, trade, the press, public meetings; with no local self-government, but official persons appointed by the court, transmitting all the governing power from above; and the citizen a cipher, with no power to alter or improve his own condition or that of his neighbors. We owe a vast debt to our public schools; but another immense education has been given to this nation by the town-meetings, by the frequent elections, by the discussion of all public questions by the people themselves, and by the struggles of party. Then, in

European countries, a thousand restrictions, the growth of centuries, rest like heavy weights crushing down the energies of the mind. Here there is unlimited competition; the career open to all talents; the highest prizes offered to any who are able to grasp them; the largest part of the products of industry going into the hands of those who earn them. And from all this results that terrible energy, that ceaseless activity of our people, which, like the rush of the earth on its axis, we do not perceive, because we all share it, and because it is never interrupted.

No doubt every work of man has its good and its evil. The advantage of a monarchy with aristocratic institutions is, that it gives greater advantages to the few; the advantages of a Republic with free institutions and equal laws is, that it gives a wider education and larger comfort to the many. People who have plenty of money, and who care only for themselves, do well, therefore, to go and live in Europe, and enjoy the various luxuries they can there find. But those who can taste the higher satisfactions which come from the sight of human progress; from taking part in the conflict against ignorance, error, wrong; from helping on great reforms, and contributing to the diffusion of knowledge, refinement, and high principle, among the masses of men, - let them come to America and help us, as so many noble foreigners have done, from Lafayette and Steuben

to Follen and Schurz, in the greatest battle ever waged on earth, the battle of light with darkness,

of good with evil. For America is the field of this majestic struggle, and here is to be decided at last the destinies of the human race.

If, then, it be asked, what has been accomplished by our Republican institutions during this hundred years, I would reply, that they have demonstrated four facts, viz.: (1.) That there can be universal religion without an established church. (2.) That there can be universal education without sectarian schools. (3.) That there can be universal order without a standing army. (4.) That freedom and equal rights make the most stable government.

We are so accustomed, in this country, to religious institutions which are supported solely by the people themselves, that we sometimes forget that we are the only civilized nation which does not have an established church, or churches, supported by taxation. It has been, and is now, the almost universal opinion, that if religion is not maintained by law, it will cease to be maintained at all. All the nations of Europe are taxed to support public worship, and the result of this is, that many of them have come to confound Christianity with an odious form of government, and so have lost their faith in religion itself. Both the friends and foes of Christianity suppose that it must be held up by the State, or that it will fall. This scepticism