Bones and ashes feed the golden corn;
Fresh elixirs wander every moment
Down the veins through which the live part feeds its child, the life unborn.’
“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression. The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.
“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?
“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper, unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are, and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers.
“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...
“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means of intercommunion. For political and industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than ever before, a strong band of nationality.
“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”
In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.