America for Americans! | Page 4

Providence, we must
believe in the mission of nations for the elevation of mankind to a
better future.
And, my countrymen, it is equally significant that we stand above all
nations in our origin. We started where other nations left off.
Unrivalled for luxury and oriental splendor, the Assyrians sprung from
a band of hunters. Grand in her pyramids, and obelisks, and sphinxes,
Egypt rose from that race despised by mankind. Great in her
jurisprudence, giving law to the world, the Romans came from a band
of freebooters on the seven hills that have been made immortal by
martial genius; and that very nation, whose poets we copy, whose
orators we seek to imitate, whose artistic genius is the pride of the race,
came from barbarians, cannibals; and that proud nation beyond the sea,
that sways her sceptre over land and ocean, sprang from painted
barbarians--for such were the aborigines of proud Albion's Isle when
Cæsar invaded those shores.

Our forefathers stood upon the very summit of humanity. Recall our
constitutional convention. Perhaps no such convention had ever
assembled in the halls of a nation. That convention, composed of
fifty-five men, and such men! They were giants in intellect, in moral
character; all occupying a high social position; twenty-nine were
university men, and those that were not collegiates were men of
imperial intellects and of commanding common sense. In such a
gathering were Franklin, the venerable philosopher; Washington, who
is ever to be revered as patriot and philanthropist; and Madison, and
Hamilton, two of the most profound thinkers of that or of any other age.
It is one of those marvels that we should recall of which we have a right
to be proud; but in our pride we should not fail to ascertain why the
Almighty should start us as a nation at the very acme of
humanity--redeemed, educated, and made grand by the influences of a
divine Christianity. Those men were not mere colonists, nor were they
limited in their patriotism. "No pent-up Utica" could confine their
patriotism, for those men grasped the fundamental principle of human
rights. Nay, they declared the ultimate truth of humanity, leaving
nothing to added since, though a century has passed. Great
modifications have come to the governments of Europe. Some changes
have taken place in our national life. Yet I appeal to your intelligent
memory, to your calm judgments, if anything has been added to our
declaration of rights, those declarations founded upon the constitution
of nature. These men voiced the brotherhood of the race. All other
declarations prior to this were but for dynasties, or were ethnic at most.
But those men swept the horizon of humanity. These men called forth,
as it were, the oncoming centuries of time, and in their presence
declared that all men are created free and equal.
They not only declared the ultimate truth of human rights, but they
exhausted the right of revolution. They created a constitution founded
upon the will of the people, based upon our great declaration of rights,
embracing man's inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness. The
instrument which their genius created was left amendable by the
oncoming wants of time, modified in subordinate relations which might
be suggested by emergencies and the unfolding of our race. Here then
are the great fingers of prophecy pointing to our future.

And we have been equally favored in our population, whether we take
the Puritans who landed in New England, the Dutch who landed in
New York, or the English who crowded Maryland and Virginia. They
were first-class families. Especially do we trace back with pride that
glorious genius for liberty, for intelligence, for devotion manifested by
those heroic men and women who, amid the desolations of a terrific
winter landed on a barren rock to transform a vast wilderness, through
which the wild man roamed, into a garden wherein should grow the
flowers and the fruits of freedom.
We sometimes deprecate the cosmopolitan character of our population.
It is a fact, however, that the best blood of the old world came to us
until within ten years--not the decrepit, not the maimed, not the aged;
for over fifty per cent. of those who came were between fifteen and
thirty, and have grown up to be honorable citizens in the composition
of our constitutional society. They came not as paupers. Many of them
came, each bringing seventy dollars, some $180 dollars, and in the
aggregate they brought millions of dollars.
There has been, however, a change, a manifest change, in the character
of those from foreign shores within the last decade. The time was when
we welcomed everybody that might immigrate to this country; when
we threw our gates wide open; when in our Fourth of July orations, we
proclaimed this to be the asylum