There is another consideration that should never be lost sight of when a survey of the situation is to be attempted; and this is, that while the facts which are to be passed upon bear special relations to their immediate predecessors and surroundings, that these with them bear certain definite, general relations to the facts of all past time, and to those that will be in all future time. The present is a part of the common order of the universe, extending infinitely backward and forward—a part of the line of evolvement, neither end of which can be compassed by human mind; and if we would learn well, we must learn all there is to learn regarding what we learn.
It is a definite and unanswerable proposition, then, that every nation of which we have historic record, was a result of pre-existing causes, and led to further effects, and that each filled and performed a part, especially its own, which was a natural and necessary result of the time and place it existed in. By a careful study of the rise and fall of each of the great nations that have existed and an analytic comparison of the elements of strength and decay that were prominent therein, and of their relations to each other, just deductions as to what the present will lead to, may be arrived at. If the present is the result of the past, the future must be the result of the present, and like it be the experiences of creation in the process of evolution from the infinite to the infinite.
Government, standing forth prominently as the grandest of all human conceptions and realizations, has in all times been the representative of civilization, and the principal means of its diffusion. Bearing this impress of importance, it may be well to examine the real significance of the term, or to find the relations it sustains to society. One fact meets us wherever we may search in the past—the fact of government Though it is one of the universal necessities and accompaniments of existence, it is extremely doubtful if its composition is realized to any considerable extent. Government means control—implies power. No people can create government because they cannot create power. An existing power may be organized into form by a people, and this becomes their government. This power is not in the individuals who exercise it, they are simply its servants. It is not the people who organize or consent to it; they are simply represented by it. It is above individuals, and is independent of peoples, though its channels of operation may be modified by individuals and peoples. Thus come all governments, while revolutions are the results of the outworking of principles, through peoples, who are their representatives. When analyzed, it thus appears that governments are independent of peoples, and always exist in some form while peoples come and pass away.
It is problematically true, that China was the first nation that arrived at a system of government at all removed from brute, individual force, and historically so, that there always was a westward tendency to empire. After China, India; then Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, general Europe and America. Each one of these nations, to Rome, was the result of the course of events, begun in China, to the course of which each succeeding one added its experiences. The progress of this course of events has encircled the world. It can go no further westward without crossing the Pacific and beginning again in China. What is the significance of this fact, or has it no special indications? It is evident that the old order of nature has completed a cycle, and that a new order will be commenced, and that, the new order is to spring from this country, and consequently, that we are its representatives. This is made doubly plain, when we refer to the fact that Asiatic tendencies are now eastward, and that John Chinaman is the new competition our laboring classes have to encounter.
It cannot be expected that the new order of events, we, as a country are inaugurating, will be characterized by the element of the old, just completed. It had its mission to perform. It accomplished it, and has passed away. Its fruit is our Government and the civilization of the present. A new mission begins. Are there any sources from which its character may be predicated? Though the creation has completed another cycle of progressive development, the common course of nature never stops. Therefore the same common order prevails now, that did when the planes of Iran poured forth its people westward.
One of the principal features of natural events has been a tendency on the part of all great nations to acquire universal dominion. Each in turn attempted it and failed, because of the imperfectly developed form of the government they sought to control by. What are the evidences that all future forms may not fail from similar causes, or specially, that the form we represent will not fail?
The first and most important evidence is, that in its organic principles the Brotherhood of the Human Race is recognized. All men are born free and equal, does not mean that all men born in the United States are free and equal, but that all men everywhere are. This, then, is the basis idea upon which our Government is built; whether the structure is yet perfect or not the foundation is, and can never be overturned. There can be no higher proposition upon which to build; therefore additions, tending to perfectability, must be made upon this foundation.
Another evidence is, that the world is becoming Americanized: that is, the world is assimilating to the American idea of freedom and equality. How and why? The vast populations other countries have transplanted to our soil are in constant communication with friends they left behind, who thus catch the spirit of equality and freedom, and become imbued with the spirit of our institutions, and thus involuntarily become like us, while still subjects of other powers.
All nations contribute to our strength, and by so doing render us not only peculiarly American in character, but cosmopolitan to the world. We are not only American, but European, Asiatic and African; while each of these are becoming American. We are, therefore, the centre of attraction for the world, and the world involuntarily recognizes our superior strength by giving up its population to increase it; while we repay it, not in physical strength, but with progressive and comprehensive ideas. In accordance with these facts, patent to every one, it is asserted, that The World is becoming Americanized, and that this is an evidence that the form of government by which we tend to universal control is founded on those general principles which give it that permanency, which insures its continuance until it shall become universal.
If the order of civilization is observed the same deduction will be arrived at The material universe has had its geologic periods The social has had and will have its periods to correspond. Nature maintains a regular and consistent order everywhere. It is the degree that this order is understood, by the general mind, that constitutes the sociologic periods of the world. The first era of civilization was inaugurated by the Assyrian and Egyptian empires, more especially the latter, more than 2000 years B. C.