Sir, there is a mighty change going on in human development. Formerly great things were done by great men, whose names stand in history like milestones, marking the march of mankind on the highway of progress. It was mankind which marched, and still it passed unnoticed and unknown. Of him history has made no record, but of the milestones only, and has called them great men. The lofty frame of individual greatness overshadowed the people, who were ready to follow but not prepared to go without being led. Humanity and its progress was absorbed by individualities; because the people which stood low in the valley got giddy by looking up to the mountain's top, where its leaders stood. It was the age of childhood for nations. Children cling to the leading strings as to a necessity, and feel it a benefit to be led.
But the leaders of nations changed soon into kings. Ambition claimed as a right what merit had gained as a free offering. Arrogance succeeded to greatness; and out of the child-like attachment for benefits received, the duty of blind obedience was framed by the iron hand of violence, and by the craft of impious hypocrisy, degrading everything held for holy by men—religion itself—into a tool of oppression on earth. It was the era of uncontroverted despotism, which, with sacrilegious arrogance, claimed the title of divine rank; and mankind advanced slowly in progress, because it was not conscious of its own aim. Oppression was taken for a gloomy fatality.
The scene has changed. Nations have become conscious of their rights and destiny, and will tolerate no masters, nor will suffer oppression any longer. The spirit of freedom moves through the air; and remember, that you are morally somewhat responsible for it, inasmuch as it is your glorious struggle for independence which was the first upheaving of mankind's heart roused to self-conscious life. Even by that first effort she gloriously achieved the national independence of America. Though gifted with all the blessings of nature's virginal vitality, you would never have succeeded to achieve this wonderful growth which we see, if you had employed your conquered national independence merely to take a new master for the old one.
And mark well, gentlemen! a nation may have a master even if it has no king—a nation may be called a republic, and yet be not free—Wherever centralization exists, there the nation has either sold or lent, either alienated or delegated its sovereignty; and wherever this is done, the nation has a master—and he who has a master is of course not his own master. Power may be centralized in many—the centralization by and by will be concentrated in few, as in ancient Venice, or in one, as in France at the time of the "Uncle," some forty years ago, and again in France, now that the "Nephew" has his bloody reign for a day.
Yes, gentlemen, if that generation of devoted patriots who achieved the Independence of the United States, had merely changed the old master for a new one with the name of an Emperor or a King, or of an omnipotent President, your country were now just something like Brazil or Mexico, or the Republic of South America, all of them independent, as you know, and all except Brazil even Republics, and all rich with nature's blessings, and offering a new home to those who fly from the oppression of the Old World—and yet all of them old before they were young, and decrepit before they were strong. Had the founders of your country's Independence followed this direction which led the rest of America astray, Cincinnati would be a hamlet yet as it was in Jacob Wetzel's time; and Ohio, instead of being a first-rate star in the constellation of your Republic, would be an appendage of neighbouring Eastern States—a not yet explored desert, marked in the map of America only by lines of northern latitude and western longitude.
The people, a real sovereign; your institutions securing real freedom, because founded on the principles of self-government; union to secure national independence and the position of a power on earth; and all together, having no master but God; omnipotence not vested in any man, in any assembly,—and an open field to every honest exertion—because civil, political, and religious liberty is the common benefit to all, not limited but by itself (that is, by the unseen, but not unfelt, influence of self-given law); that is the key of the living wonder which spreads before my eyes.
Let me recall to your memory a curious fact. It is just a hundred years ago, that the first trading house upon the Great Miami was built by daring English adventurers, at a place later known as Laramie's Store, then the territory of the Twigtwee Indians. The trade house was destroyed by Frenchmen, who possessed then a whole world on the continent of America. Well, twenty-four years later, France aided your America in its struggle for independence; and oh! feel not offended in your proud power of to-day, when I say that independence would not then have been achieved without the aid of France.
Since that time, France has been twice a Republic, and changed its constitutions thirteen times; and, though thirty-six millions strong, it has lost every foot of land on the continent of America, and at home it lies prostrated beneath the feet of the most inglorious usurper that ever dared to raise ambition's bloody seat upon the ruins of liberty. And your Republic? It has grown a giant of power. And Ohio? out of the ruins of a trading-house into a mighty commonwealth of two millions of free and happy men, who shout out with a voice like the thunderstorm, to the despots of the Old World, "ye shall stop in your ambitious way before the power of freedom, ready to protect the common laws of all humanity."
What a glorious triumph of your institutions over the principles of
CENTRALIZED government!
Oh! may all the generations yet unborn, and all the millions who will yet gather in this New World of the West, which soon will preponderate in the scale of the Union, where all the west weighed nothing fifty years ago—may they all ever and ever remember the high instruction which the Almighty has revealed in this parallel of different results.