tes to the
civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new
elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political
character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has
most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not
made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of
ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased
speed round the old circles of thought and action; but it has assumed a
new character; it has raised itself from _beneath_ governments to a
participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects
with the daily pursuits of individual men; and, with a freedom and
strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the
whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short,
when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when
society has maintained its rights against military power, and
established, on foundations never hereafter to be shaken, its competency
to govern itself.

_A New Governmental Experiment_

It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington that, having been
intrusted in revolutionary times, with the supreme military command, and
having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor,
he should be placed at the head of the first government in which an
attempt was to be made on a large scale to rear the fabric of social
order on the basis of a written constitution, and of a pure
representative principle. A government was to be established without a
throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges;
and this government, instead of being a democracy existing and acting
within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast
country of different climates, interests, and habits, and of various
communions of our common Christian faith. The experiment certainly was
entirely new. A popular government of this extent, it was evident, could
be framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of
representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether
society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace
and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct
itself to political renown and glory. By the benignity of Providence,
this experiment, so full of interest to us and to our posterity
forever, so full of interest, indeed, to the wo