swered the
call of destiny by taking for its motto the word _ahead_.

Indeed, gentlemen, the monuments you raised to the heroic martyrs who
fertilized with their hearts' blood the soil of liberty--these monuments
are a fair tribute of well-deserved gratitude, gratifying to the spirits
who are hovering around us and honourable to you. Woe to the people
which neglect to honour its great and good men; but believe me,
gentlemen, those blessed spirits would look down with saddened brows to
this free and happy land, if ever they were doomed to see that the happy
inheritors of their martyrdom imagined that the destiny to which that
martyr blood was consecrated, is accomplished, and its price fully paid
in the already achieved results, because the living generation dwells
comfortably and makes TWO DOLLARS out of _one_.

No, gentlemen, the stars in the sky have a higher aim than merely to
illumine the night-path of some lonely wanderer. The course your nation
is called to run, is not yet half performed. Mind the fable of
Atalanta: it was a golden apple thrown into her way which made her fall
short in her race.

Two things I have met here in these free and mighty United States, which
I am at a loss how to make concord. The two things I cannot harmonize
are:--First, that all your historians, all your statesmen, all your
distinguished orators, who wrote or spoke, characterize it as AN ERA in
mankind's history, destined to change the condition of the world, upon
which it will rain an everflowing influence. And secondly, in
contradiction to this universally adopted creed, I have met in many
quarters a propensity to believe that it is conservative wisdom not to
take any active part in the regulation of the outward world.

These two things do not agree. If that be the destiny of America, which
you all believe to be, then that destiny can never be fulfilled by
acting the part of passive spectators, and by this very passivity
granting a charter to ambitious Czars to dispose of the condition of the
world.

I have met distinguished men trusting so much to the operative power of
your institutions and of your _example_, that they really believe
they will make their way throughout the world merely by their _moral
influence_. But there is one thing those gentlemen have disregarded
in their philanthropic reliance; and that is, that the ray of the sun
never yet made its way by itself through well-closed shutters and
doors--they must be dra