olitical right but obedience. All above was
intangible power, all below quiet subjection. A recent occurrence in the
French Chambers shows us how public opinion on these subjects is
changed. A minister had spoken of the "king's subjects." "There are no
subjects," exclaimed hundreds of voices at once, "in a country where the
people make the king!"

Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured
and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course
into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from Heaven, it has
gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast
changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty is to show, in
our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a
spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that
its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral
order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates
principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us
with a willing, but something of a fearful admiration. Its deep and
awful anxiety is to learn whether free states may be stable, as well as
free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared; in short,
whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the
contemplation of theorists, or a truth established, illustrated, and
brought into practice in the country of Washington.

Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the
sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands,
for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who
shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one, not
of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to
be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this
great _Western Sun_ be struck out of the firmament, at what other
fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb
shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world?

There is no danger of our overrating or overstating the important part
which we are now acting in human affairs. It should not flatter our
personal self-respect, but it should reanimate our patriotic virtues,
and inspire us with a deeper and more solemn sense, both of our
privileges and of our duties. We cannot wish better for our country, nor
for the world, than that th