"A Hungarian poet, on a visit to England, enjoyed the intimacy of Hakluyt, and, through him introduced to the society of such men as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Philip Sidney, was initiated into the hopes and projects of the nobler England of the day. He has celebrated these in a poem addressed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The return of the Golden Age promised in ancient prophecy is, he believes, impossible in Europe, sunk below the iron one. He sees it, in vision, revive upon the soil of the New World, under the auspices of men who, true colonizers, renounce home and country, and dare the vast, vague dangers of sea and wilderness, not for gain or for glory, but 'for the peace and welfare of mankind.'
"'Oh, were it mine to join the chosen band,
Predestined planters of the promised land,
My happy part for after-time to trace
The earliest annals of a new-born race!
There Earth, with Man at amity once more,
To willing toil shall yield her willing store.
There Law with Equity shall know no strife;
Justice and Mercy no divided life.
Not there to birth shall merit bend; not there
Riches o'ermaster freedom. Tyrant care
Shall lay no burden on man's opening years,
Nor bow his whitening head with timeless fears;
But—every season in its order blest—
Youth shall enjoy its hope, and age its rest!'
"Our poet was in earnest. He did not write the annals of the country that his hero did not found; but he shared his grave under the waves of the Atlantic. Their hope outlived them. Visions like theirs are not for you and me, Westlake. They are for young men,—for the men who never grow old. We may admit that such have their place in the world. Man must strive for something greatly beyond what he can attain, to effect anything. He cannot strive for what he has not faith in. Those men who live in aspirations that transcend this sphere believe that all human hearts can be tuned to the same pitch with theirs. We know better, but let us not for that contemn their efforts. I am no visionary. I have no inward evidence of things not seen; but I am capable of believing what is proved. I believe in work,—that none is lost, but that, whether for good or ill, every exertion of power and patience tells. I believe in race, and I believe in progress for a race with which belief in progress is a tradition, and which inherits, besides, the strength, the courage, and the persistence which make faith prophetic.
"Your institutions, Westlake, are to yield the ground to other forms. They are contrary to the inborn principles of the race that leads on this continent. We at the North, who tolerate them, tolerate them because we know they are ephemeral. It is a consciousness of their transitoriness that enables you yourselves to put up with them."
"Not so fast! If they are not rooted, they are taking root. They have a stronger hold with every year. If any of us felt in the way you suppose, we should have to keep our thoughts to ourselves."
"So you all keep your thoughts to yourselves for fear of each other. What a lightening of hearts, when you once come to an understanding! I wish it soon for your own sakes; but a few years in the life of a people are of small account. I am willing to wait for the fulness of time. The end is sure."
"It all looks very simple to you, I dare say."
"I do not undervalue your difficulties. The greatest is this miserable population that has crept over your borders from the older Slave States: progeny of outcasts and of reckless adventurers, they never had a country and have never found one. Without aims or hopes, they ask of their worthless life only its own continuance. Ignorant that they can never know anything worse than to remain what they are, dreading change more than those who may have something to lose by it, they uphold the system that dooms them to immobility, shameful Atlantes of the dismal structure."
"You will not wonder that we are ready to renounce the theories of equality put forth by the men you would have us look to as founders. We make laws to keep our black servants from getting instruction. Do you think we could legislate the class you speak of into receiving it?"
"Westlake, they are here. They are among you, and will be of you, or you of them."