In Europe the same thing is taking place. The nations are becoming acquainted with each other. The old prejudices are dying out. The people cf each nation are beginning to find that they are not the enemies of any other. They are also beginning to suspect that where they have no cause of quarrel, they should neither be called upon to fight, nor to pay the expenses of war.
Another thing: The kings and statesmen no longer act as they formerly did. Once they were responsible only to their poor and wretched-subjects, whose obedience they compelled at the point of the bayonet. Now a king knows, and his minister knows, that they must give account for what they do to the civilized world. They know that kings and rulers must be tried before the great bar of public opinion—a public opinion that has been formed by the facts given to them in the Press of the world. They do not wish to be condemned at that great bar. They seek not only not to be condemned—not only to be acquitted—but they seek to be crowned. They seek the applause, not simply of their own nation, but of the civilized world.
There was for uncounted centuries a conflict between civilization and barbarism. Barbarism was almost universal, civilization local. The torch of progress was then held by feeble hands, and barbarism extinguished it in the blood of its founders. But civilizations arose, and kept rising, one after another, until now the great Republic holds and is able to hold that torch against a hostile world.
By its invention, by its weapons of war, by its intelligence, civilization became capable of protecting itself, and there came a time when in the struggle between civilization and barbarism the world passed midnight.
Then came another struggle,—the struggle between the people and their rulers.
Most peoples sacrificed their liberty through gratitude to some great soldier who rescued them from the arms of the barbarian. But there came a time when the people said: "We have a right to govern ourselves." And that conflict has been waged for centuries.
And I say, protected and corroborated by the flag of the greatest of all Republics, that in that conflict the world has passed midnight.
Despotisms were softened by parliaments, by congresses—but at last the world is beginning to say: "The right to govern rests upon the consent of the governed. The power comes from the people—not from kings. It belongs to man, and should be exercised by man."
In this conflict we have passed midnight. The world is destined to be republican. Those who obey the laws will make the laws.
Our country—the United States—the great Republic—owns the fairest portion of half the world. We have now sixty millions of free people. Look upon the map of our country. Look upon the great valley of the Mississippi—stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. See the great basin drained by that mighty river. There you will see a territory large enough to feed and clothe and educate five hundred millions of human beings.