The World Interested in the Experiment

I remarked, Gentlemen, that the whole world was and is interested in the result of this experiment.  And is it not so?  Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment the career which this government is running is among the most attractive objects to the civilized world?  Do we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment that love of liberty and that understanding of its true principles which are flying over the whole earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really and truly of American origin?

Importance of the English Revolution of 1688

At the period of the birth of Washington there existed in Europe no political liberty in large communities, except in the provinces of Holland, and except that England herself had set a great example, so far as it went, by her glorious Revolution of 1688.  Everywhere else, despotic power was predominant, and the feudal or military principle held the mass of mankind in hopeless bondage.  One-half of Europe was crushed beneath the Bourbon scepter, and no conception of political liberty, no hope even of religious toleration, existed among that nation which was America’s first ally.  The king was the state, the king was the country, the king was all.  There was one king, with power not derived from his people, and too high to be questioned; and the rest were all subjects, with no political right but obedience.  All above was intangible power, all below quiet subjection.  A recent occurrence in the French chamber shows us how public opinion on these subjects is changed.  A minister had spoken of the “king’s subjects.”  “There are no subjects,” exclaimed hundreds of voices at once, “in a country where the people make the king!”

Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations.  Like an emanation from Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void.  It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth.  Our great, our high duty is to show, in our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers.  The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration.  Its deep and awful anxiety is to learn whether free States may be stable, as well as free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared; in short, whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth established, illustrated, and brought into practice in the country of Washington.

The United States a Western Sun