em ultimately fail, popular governments
must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more
favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last
hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be
proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the
experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the
earth.

These are excitements to duty; but they are not suggestions of doubt.
Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us, and all that
surrounds us, authorize the belief, that popular governments, though
subject to occasional variations, in form perhaps not always for the
better, may yet, in their general character, be as durable and permanent
as other systems. We know, indeed, that in our country any other is
impossible. The _principle_ of free governments adheres to the American
soil. It is bedded in it, immovable as its mountains.

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation,
and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who established our liberty
and our government are daily dropping from among us. The great trust now
descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented
to us, as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for
independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are
there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders
of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great
duty of defence and preservation; and there is opened to us, also, a
noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our
proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement.
In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of
peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers,
build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see
whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something
worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and
harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to
us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that
these twenty-four States are one country. Let our conceptions be
enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the
whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object
be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND