which you are proud to hear styled “the living wonder of the world”—­yes, even your country in the New World, and England in the Old—­England, that gigantic workshop of industry, surrounded with a beautiful evergreen garden; yes, all the dominions of the Anglo-Saxon race, can claim no higher praise of its prosperity, than when we say, that you have reproduced the grandeur of those ancient nations, and nearly equal their prosperity.  And what has become of them?  A sad skeleton.  What remains of their riches, of their splendour, and of their vast dominions?  An obscure recollection; a vain memory.  Thus fall empires; thus vanish nations, which have no better guardians than their prosperity.  But “we have,” will you say, “we have a better guardian—­our freedom, our republican institutions; our confederation uniting so many glorious stars into one mighty galaxy—­these are the ramparts of our present, these our future security.”

Well, it would ill become me to investigate if there be nothing “rotten in the state of Denmark,” and certainly I am not the man who could feel inclined to undervalue the divine power of liberty; to underrate the value of your democratic institutions, and the vitality of your glorious Union.  It is to them I look in the solitary hours of meditation, and when, overwhelmed with the cares of the patriot, my soul is groaning under nameless woes, it is your freedom’s sunny light which dispels the gloomy darkness of despondency; here is the source whence the inspiration of hope is flowing to the mourning world, that down-trodden millions at the bottom of their desolation still retain a melancholy smile upon their lips, and still retain a voice in their bleeding chest, to thank the Almighty God that the golden thread of freedom is not yet lost on earth.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, all this I feel, and all this I know, reflecting upon your freedom, your institutions, and your Union; but casting back my look into the mirror of the past, there I see upon mouldering ground, written with warning letters, the dreadful truth, that all this has nothing new; all this has been; and all this has never yet been proved sufficient security.  Freedom is the fairest gift of Heaven; but it is not the security of itself.  Democracy is the embodiment of freedom, which in itself is but a principle.  But what is the security of democracy?  And if you answer, “The Union is;” then I ask, “And where is the security of the Union?” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Freedom is no new word.  It is as old as the world.  Despotism is new, but Freedom not.  And yet it has never yet proved a charter to the security of nations.  Republic is no new word.  It is as old as the word “Society.”  Before Rome itself, republics absorbed the world.  There were in all Europe, Africa and Asia Minor, but republics to be found, and many among them democratic.  Men had to wander to far Persia if they would have desired to know what sort of thing a monarch is.  And all they have perished; the small ones by foreign