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 of the oppressed, the home of the
down-trodden. But in the process of time this great opportunity
afforded the nations of the old world came to be abu