Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia / being a concordance of choice tributes to the great Genoese, his grand discovery, and his greatness of mind and purpose

by Unknown

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

Patrick Henry, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, June 6, 1799. The author of the celebrated phrase, "Give me liberty or give me death," in speaking in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected, meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

Niña. Santa Maria. Pinta.
THE FLEET OF COLUMBUS
(See pages [216] and [282].)

But you must have men; you can not get along without them; those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are growing, must be cleared away; those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, and they will come in; the population of the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance; a land over which peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down at every door. They see something still more attractive than all this; they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode; that liberty whom they had considered as a fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of poets; they see her here a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States, her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Let but this our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.