be debited
is the aid we have, in so many forms, derived from her. Making every
allowance for this, it is a clear credit in our favor that one-tenth
of Christendom should have done so much more than a tenth of its
effective thinking simultaneously with taming the most savage half
of its domain. We have more than our share of laborers in the mental
vineyard, though fewer of them are master-workmen. We utilize for
Europe herself, and send back to her in its first available shape,
much of what her students produce. As between thought and substance,
the two continents interchange offices. We import the crude material
her philosophers harvest or mine, work it up and return it, just as
she takes the yield of our non-metaphorical fields and strata and
restores it manufactured. Much of the social, political and industrial
advancement of Europe within the century she may be said to owe to
the United States. Her governmental reforms certainly and confessedly
found here their germ. These gave birth to others of a social
character. In this manner, as well as more directly by our commerce,
inventions and example, we have stimulated her industry. We have
spread before her the two oceans, and taught her to traverse them with
a firm and masterful mien, no longer

As one who in a lonely road doth walk in fear and dread.

We have created cities upon her havens, Parliaments in her capitals,
and stronger hearts and quicker hands in her villages. No community on
her varied surface but is the better for America. That our people and
their labors have done it all it would be absurd to say; but the Old
World's progress in the period under review can be but very partially
accounted for by any internal force of its own. None of its rulers or
peoples adventure a reform of any kind without a preliminary, if often
only a half-conscious, glance of inquiry westward. Collectively as
members of a European republic of nations, and internally each
within itself, they have in this way learned, after many recalcitrant
struggles, to recognize and respect local independence. Municipal law
has gained new life. The commune has become an entity everywhere, and
the nations which it informs have established the right to readjust or
recast their constitutions without being hounded down as disturbers
of the peace. The contribution of the American Union to such results
would earn it honor at the hands of history were it to sink into
nothing to-morrow. Had no suc