View it as we may, the wisdom of man has yet evolved nothing to surpass the Constitution of the United States. Whether Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine was the author of its leading features, is a matter that I shall not stop to discuss, but suffice it to say, that upon it has been established the best government in the world. There is no other system in ancient or modern history that could weld together and bring into the social and political affinity of one great integral harmony the immense variety and diversity of human elements that are dwelling as one large and comparatively happy family in the United States.
What other system could combine so many nationalities, creeds, passions and prejudices, modifying all of them and uniting all for the general good and the perfection of a higher development of human nature in political and social life?
There is none. We must go to the pleasanter pages of political fiction to find a comparison.
This country has made greater strides in each decade towards the possible approach of More’s Utopia or Plato’s Republic than any other country has done in the same number of centuries.
It must be admitted that we are a considerable distance from the happy goal contemplated by the writers named, but we are moving in the direction to show that its attainment is possible. We shall yet accomplish what the world has hitherto considered a pleasant fiction overworked through the highest ideal of Greek art.
This high state of development is what we are coming to in spite of the fact that the average ward politician has immense chasms to cross before the hill tops of his evolution shall appear in sight. When he begins to climb, however, his ascent will be marvellously rapid and he will leave that vehement youth of Longfellow’s, whose watchword was Excelsior, far in the distance. Moreover, his steps will be steady and prudent, and not liable to unfortunate reaction or fatal mishap.
It has been said that revolutions never go backward. With much stronger emphasis it may be asserted that evolutions in a Republic like those I am now contemplating never recede, but still press forward and upward towards the mark of a higher ideal.
A large proportion of the people who come here do so for the chief purpose of getting away from other forms of government that are despotic in their rule and oppressive to their subjects.
These people who come to us are saved and redeemed Their lives would have been wasted if they had remained in the land of their birth. In this country, they not only add to the wealth of the nation, but they become useful members of the social fabric, with few exceptions, enjoying happiness themselves and bringing up children, whom they teach to admire, honor and revere the institutions of this country in contrast with the land of their own nativity.
This country has thus become the asylum for the down-trodden of every nation, and it is a great gainer by the contrast thus constantly presented to the minds of those who come here. Our own people are also in this way taught to appreciate their privileges and set a higher value upon the advantages they enjoy.