And now what is the peculiar virtue and glory of this nation?  Why, that its national existence is based upon a recognition of the absolute rights and duties of humanity.  Theoretically this is our basis; practically there is a commixture; much of this cosmopolitan faith is mingled with much of confined self-regard.  But the theoretical fact is the one here in point:  since the question now is not of the national unfaith or infidelity, but of the national faith.  And beyond a question, the real faith of the nation, so far as it has one, is represented by its formal declaration, made sacred by the shedding of blood.  Our belief really is not in the special right or privilege of Americans, but in the prerogative of man.  This prerogative we may have succeeded well or ill in stating and interpreting; the fact, that our appeal is to this, alone concerns us here.

Now this national attitude, so far as history informs me, is unprecedented.  The true-born son of Albion, save as an exceptional culture enlarges his soul, believes religiously that God is an Englishman, and that the interests of England precede those of the universe.  When, therefore, he sees anything done which depletes the pocket of England, it affects him with a sense of infidelity in those to whom this loss is due.  England professes to have a national religion; she has, and in a deeper sense than is commonly meant.

We will not disparage England overmuch; she has done good service in history.  We will not boast of ourselves; the actual politics of this country have been, in no small part, base and infidel to a degree that is simply sickening.  Nevertheless, it remains true that the fundamental idea of the State here represents a new phase of human history.  Every European nationality had taken shape and character while yet our globe was not known to be a globe, while before the eyes of all lookers land and sea faded away into darkness and mystery; and it was not possible that common human sympathy should take into its arms a world of which it could not conceive.  But a national spirit was here generated when the ocean had been crossed, when the earth had been rounded, when, too, Newton had, as it were, circumnavigated the solar system,—­when, therefore, there could be, and must be, a new recognition of humanity.  Our country, again, was peopled from the minorities of Europe, from those whom the spirit of the new time had touched, and taken away their content with old institutions,—­a population restless, uncertain, yeasty, chaotic, it might be, full of the rawness of new conditions, mean and magnanimous by turns, as such people are wont, but all leavened more or less with a sentiment new in history,—­all leavened with a kind of whole-world feeling, a sense of the oneness of humanity, and, as derived from this, a sense of absolute rights of man, of prerogatives belonging to human nature as such.