ch is wholly freed from the reproach of
impressment?

It is true that, during a long period of non-impressment, and even down
to the present day, flogging has been, and still is, the law of the
English navy. But in things of this kind England should be nothing to
us, except an example to be shunned. Nor should wise legislators wholly
govern themselves by precedents, and conclude that, since scourging has
so long prevailed, some virtue must reside in it. Not so. The world has
arrived at a period which renders it the part of Wisdom to pay homage
to the prospective precedents of the Future in preference to those of
the Past. The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is
endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The
Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all
things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; the Future is both hope and
fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future the Bible of
the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot's
wife, crystallised in the act of looking backward, and forever
incapable of looking before.

Let us leave the Past, then, to dictate laws to immovable China; let us
abandon it to the Chinese Legitimists of Europe. But for us, we will
have another captain to rule over us--that captain who ever marches at
the head of his troop and beckons them forward, not lingering in the
rear, and impeding their march with lumbering baggage-wagons of old
precedents. _This_ is the Past.

But in many things we Americans are driven to a rejection of the maxims
of the Past, seeing that, ere long, the van of the nations must, of
right, belong to ourselves. There are occasions when it is for America
to make precedents, and not to obey them. We should, if possible, prove
a teacher to posterity, instead of being the pupil of by-gone
generations. More shall come after us than have gone before; the world
is not yet middle-aged.

Escaped from the house of bondage, Israel of old did not follow after
the ways of the Egyptians. To her was given an express dispensation; to
her were given new things under the sun. And we Americans are the
peculiar, chosen people--the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the
liberties of the world. Seventy years ago we escaped from thrall; and,
besides our first birthright--embracing one continent of earth--God has
given to us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the
political pa